Carol and I had lunch today at the Black Bear Cafe, and while working on my canonical half Carson Club (a ham-and-swiss with bacon; I tell ’em to hold the tomatoes) the muzak played “Down Under” by Men At Work. I recalled that, back in (presumably) 1982, when the song hit #1 here, I missed an opportunity to actually try Vegemite, famously mentioned in the song. We lived in Rochester, NY at the time, where I was writing data validation software for Xerox. At one of the Rochester Science Fact and Fiction Association potlucks, somebody had brought a jar of vegemite and put it out in a bowl for us to try. I looked at it with some interest, but Alice Insley (now Bentley) leaned over and said “Don’t. It’s awful.” (At least I think it was Alice, but sheesh, that was 27 years ago!)
So I passed on Vegemite, and it and I have not crossed paths at all in the ensuing years. Reading about the famous brown beer-yeast goop on Wikipedia made me ponder what other opportunities I have missed in my life. One was Microsoft stock: I told my broker to buy some when MS went public in 1986, and she didn’t, telling me later that she “couldn’t find any.” Bummer. (I’d be worth about $20M now if she had.) I passed on a very good job right out of college, working as a tech editor for an orthopedic surgery magazine associated with the Northwestern University medical school. It involved scrubbing up and observing surgeries right there in the operating room, and then documenting the procedures that they were developing at the time. The job paid $12.5K/year, which was a fortune for a liberal arts grad during the 1974 recession. I took a job performing surgeries on Xerox machines instead, for about 35% less money. Hey, I have a touchy stomach. Nothing like explosive vomiting in the operating room, eh? But I could have gotten into publishing eleven years sooner than I eventually did.
That’s about it. Keith and I talked vaguely about starting a magazine called Digital Camera Techniques back when digital cameras were still mighty exotic (I think 1995 or 1996) and decided not to. Shame. That might have been fun, but whether I could have masterminded two magazines simultaneously was a serious question. A digital camera mag was not a sure thing, either–one can be too far ahead of the curve as easily as too far behind it.
Life did not offer me a great many interesting opportunities, and those that it did offer I mostly took: Carol, Clarion, Ziff-Davis, Borland, and Keith’s famous interjection, “Hey, we could publish our own damned magazine!” I had a chance to resurrect Carl & Jerry, and I did. Mostly I was careful, and kept a low profile compared to some of my gonzo friends.
It’s a family tradition. In late 1951, when my father was about to graduate from engineering school, he was offered a job with an oil company in downtown Caracas, Venezuela. He wanted to go, but my mother was sure that Venezuela was nothing but steaming jungle. (She was a nurse; I suspect she was worried about malaria, etc.) I was born less than a year later. What would life have been like had I spent my first ten years in South America? I’d speak fluent Spanish now. I’d have seen the Magellanic Clouds. Beyond that, who knows? There are linear lives, and fractal lives. I have instinctively chosen a linear life. I’m good with that–but sometimes it makes ya wonder…
I had the same curiosity about Vegemite — so I sent off for some. Interesting & very salty. I also found (British) Marmite, and liked it much better.
Both of them are intensely “umami” — and I suspect that there is a genetic connection to liking the umami taste, as there is to several other tastes.
As an Aussie I’ll give this warning to any “outlanders” intending to try Vegemite. Don’t treat it like peanut butter and slather it on thick! As Sam’l says, it’s savoury not sweet and should be applied in moderation 🙂
Jeff, as a long time reader I must say I like the clean new look on WordPress. I was also pleased to see mention of another Drumlin story in your Plan File post. Looking forward to that.
When given the opportunity at some point I will taste it, though I will be have to be very careful, as umami suggests the presence of glutamates, and MSG does annoying things to me. But I will give it a fair shot, as with Marmite if I run across that as well. I’m getting the impression that Vegemite is more a flavoring than a food; something like anchovy. We’ll see.
And I have plans for a great deal of new Drumlin material as time and energy allow. “Drumlin Wheel” is about half completed, though completely worked out in my head. It’ll be about 10,000 words when finished. There will (with some luck) be three Drumlins novels someday: The Anything Machine, The Everything Machine, and The Anyone Machine. The first is the “arrival” story, about how Origen took its passengers to Drumland, and how they survived. The second is a novel-length adventure with the cast of “Drumlin Boiler,” including Mike & Ike & Mother Polly, plus a loopy steampunkish go-everywhere vehicle called Old Hundredth that Mike invents to allow him to reach the Big Thingmaker in the north before the Bitspace Institute does. I won’t say much yet about The Anyone Machine, but it will wrap up the series and explain the whole business of the Drumlins and how they happened.
Jeff,
I KNOW you must be familiar with this piece:
http://www.bartleby.com/119/1.html
Of course since you write science fiction you can just take the Many Worlds interpretation over the Copenhagen one any day and say you did both!
I really like the new Contrapositive on WordPress. Great Job.