"Edward M. Lerner - By The Rules" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lerner Edward M)

How different things might have been if only I'd masked the food withwasabi mustard instead of the rice
wine.
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Everyone had brought foodstuffs in my honor, so I had to sample it all. Japanese etiquette, my hostess
gleefully informed me, required downing each cup ofsaki in one swallow—and she owned water
tumblers, not delicate ceramic cups. By my third California roll, I was feeling no pain. Halfway through
my gastronomic survey, I was improvising paeans to diversity. No one even tried to match drinks with
the birthday boy, but we all got pretty damn mellow.

What came next seemed like a profound idea at the time:very multicultural soc. I remember plopping
myself down in front of a computer, and the gales of laughter as I almost toppled off the chair. I
remember guffaws at my typos and boisterous negotiations over wording. After a ceremonious clinking,
but rather more like clanking, of cheap glassware, I recall clickingsend to dispatch our masterpiece. Lost
in an alcoholic fog, however, was the exact topic of our enthusiasm.

The project about which we had all been so enthusiastic was only a vague recollection when I awakened
the next day, head throbbing and tongue furred. My only clear memory beyond dissolving raw fish in
alcohol was the sadly dead-on caricature on my birthday cake: the head of a young Woody Allen on a
tall and gangly frame. The phrase Ichabod Cranium flashed through my mind—I could only hopethat
thought had gone unarticulated.

Someone had brought me home, gotten me undressed and into bed. My bedroom faces west; the
sunlight streaming through a gap between my drapes showed it was late afternoon. If the punishment fit
the crime, I hadreally enjoyed my party. I was pondering the wisdom of getting up when a
roadrunner-like “me-meep” made my skull resonate. Email.

I stumbled past my PC on my way to the bathroom. The subject line of the newest message brought a
shock of memory. It was a reply. “Please, no,” I croaked.

Please is not always the magic word. It appeared that theJournal of Emergent Sociology was facing a
last-minute delay in the delivery of an invited paper, and so had a hole to fill in the upcoming quarterly
issue. They couldn't promise publication, of course, but would look favorably upon a timely submission
along the lines of my overnight emailed proposal.

I scrolled down the message to see just what I'd suggested in my drunken stupor. Reading, my stomach
lurched.
****

My father hoards speech as if words were being rationed for some war effort, a miserliness that manifests
itself both in vocabulary and brevity. As to the former, I'll offer only an example. I knew the wordvehicle
before car, plane, or boat. How odd is that? As for the latter, there's a reason my sister refers to Dad as
Professor Cryptic.

Before and since my teenage years, I've found his economy annoying, but it gave rise to what, entirely in
hindsight, I recognize as a valuable aid to my ability to reason abstractly. My own spendthriftness of
utterance (and any social skills I may have) I learned from my mother.