Quito – Lutfey.com

Announcer: Welcome to the premiere of Traveling Iron Chef. While Chiarman Kaga Takeshi’s “Kitchen Stadium” vision remains a fixture of Japanese culture, he recently gave a direct order to his younger brother, Lou. Instead of bumming around Kaga’s apartment watching television all day, Lou has been instructed to travel to the ends of the earth in an effort to discover more Iron Chefs. Moving through the countryside with an army of helpers and a scaled down “moderately equipped kitchen tent,” Lou searches for an answer to the eternal question, “Whose cuisine will reign supreme?”

Lou: We have traveled many moons from our homeland, and today we are broadcasting from the European country of Holland. Two local culinary artists will go in, but only one will come out with the title, “Iron Chef Amsterdam!” And now, the moment you have all been waiting for… today’s secret ingredient is… MARIJUANA!

Announcer: The marijuana plant, also known as hemp, cannabis, pot, grass, or weed, is one of the most rugged forms of flora known to mankind. Able to grow in almost any climate, marijuana has become a plant of choice for “amateur horticulturists” around the world. The non-flowering section can be used to produce cloth that is both durable and environmentally friendly. While using the bud of the plant as a cooking ingredient is not commonplace, a movement that can almost be described at underground has evolved to help promote marijuana consumption. Despite all this, the plant in question remains illegal in many parts of the world—due in large part to intensive tobacco company lobbying efforts.

Lou: To help judge the creations of our two Iron Chef candidates, we have three well-known members of Japanese society: Sumi, a young female actress from a popular soap opera, Typo, a fifty-five year old journalist, and Shooki, a new age psychic. They will be evaluating two highly respected Dutch chefs, Willhelm and Hansel. Chefs– you have one hour, starting now!

Sumi: I am very excited to be here. Hee hee hee.

Announcer: It appears that Chef Willhelm is preparing thinly-sliced duck breast for his first entrée.

Typo: I am an old, old man. And I am very good at complaining about things. This is why I am on the show so often.

Announcer: Well, this is quite amazing! Chef Willhelm is lighting a large pile of the marijuana on fire in order to SMOKE the duck breast. He is instructing one of the assistants to keep the smoke going at a constant rate. Chef Hansel is preparing chocolate and sugar. I think he is going to make some sort of a dessert.

Sumi: The tent is filling up with smoke. I kind of like it… I feel all tickly. Hee hee hee.

Shooki: Yes, I feel as though the spirits of 1000 dead relatives are inside my body dancing around and having a party.

Announcer: I’m not sure what the chefs are doing, but they are being very deliberate about their actions now. Perhaps they are contemplating their next dish. Someone had better tell them they only have one hour to complete the competition!

Typo: I find this smoke to be highly irregular. The secret ingredient should be in our tummies, and not in our lungs– very unusual. Am I talking too much? I feel as though the words are coming out of my mouth with much less effort than usual.

Shooki: I never found old, whiney Japanese men attractive until just now. Typo, can I touch your hand for a moment?

Typo: I am flattered, Shooki, but I must inform you that I called the front desk and had some hookers come up to my hotel room to pleasure me before the show. Did you know they can just add it to your room service bill? Are these thoughts in my head, or are they escaping out of my mouth?

Announcer: After spending the past five minutes staring at the top of the tent and smiling, chef Willhelm has sprung into action. He is getting something out of his pocket. It appears to be a cellular phone. Who could he be calling?

Shooki: I believe he is trying to get in touch with one of his deceased parents.

Typo: You are being foolish, Shooki. You can’t call dead people on a telephone. Where would the phone company send the bill?

Announcer: We have gotten more details from the cooking area. It appears Willhelm has called for pizza to be delivered to the tent. Extra pepperoni and bread sticks are the order. But will it get here fast enough? In the mean time, Hansel has finished baking brownies, and, if I’m not mistaken, just broke open a box of Hagelslag, or literally “chocolate hail.” This Dutch delicacy is generally used as a bread topping instead of cheese or jam.

Sumi: Chocolate hail? Is the tent going to hold up okay? Hee hee hee… snort! Snort! SNORT!

Announcer: Chef Hansel has just filled his mouth with Hagelslag. Now he is laughing uncontrollably and it appears the tiny pieces of chocolate are coming out his nose.

Lou: Competitors, your time is up!

Announcer: It has been quite an unsual hour. Chef Willhelm, please explain your dishes.

Chef Willhelm: I was planning on making a smoked duck dish, but my assistant got too high from the marijuana smoke and fell asleep under the table. So, as a backup plan, I had pizza delivered. Unless the delivery guy screwed up, it should be pepperoni. Unfortunately, I ate the bread sticks during the commercial.

Typo: I like the taste of the pizza, but if I am not mistaken, there is no direct connection with the special ingredient. Also, it feels as though the food getting larger in my mouth the more I chew it. Is that happening to anyone else?

Shooki: I see dead people! Get it? I’m being funny. It’s from that movie a few years ago– the one with the little kid.

Announcer: And now, Chef Hansel, tell us what you have done here.

Chef Hansel: Well, I don’t know about everyone else, but I got really stoned when what’s-his-name lit that big pile of pot on fire. But I’m used to it, so I made my favorite pot brownies. Oh yeah, and I’m sorry about the Hagelslag coming out my nose… it just seemed like a good idea at the time.

Typo: I think this dish truly enhances the flavor of the marijuana. Please do not be insulted that I didn’t try any of it– I’m saving it for the hookers in my hotel room.

Shooki: Can I go with you? I’ve never seen hookers before. How much do they cost?

Typo: It depends on what you want. You can ask them when we get back to the hotel.

Sumi: You are cute, so I’m going to give you a lot of points. Hee hee hee.

Announcer: The competition is complete. Who is going to be Iron Chef Amsterdam?

Lou: Sumi awarded Chef Hansel twenty points. Typo and Shooki seemed to have left without turning in their scorecards. So I guess the winner is… Iron Chef Hansel. Yeah, yeah, yeah, now hand me one of those brownies. And does anyone here have any Pink Floyd? I could really go for some Dark Side of the Moon right about now…

Well folks, it’s that time of year again– the days are getting shorter, annoying Christmas music is playing at the mall, the political forces that run our nation are gearing up for the next presidential election, and, of course, it’s time to publish my third annual Christmas letter. This brings up the question of whether I should even try to construct a letter that surpasses the high standard that I set for myself when writing the first two Christmas letters. Consider the world of movies for a moment. By the time they get to making a third movie in a series it pretty much just sucks. I am sure they meant well when they made “Superman 3”, but putting Christopher Reeves, Richard Prior, and a wacky evil computer together isn’t something to be proud of. Even “Return of the Jedi” wasn’t as good as its predecessors. Oh no, they built ANOTHER Death Star for the good guys to blow up at the very end. On the other hand, I listened to the School House Rock CD (which I own, of course) and learned that three is a magic number. I don’t think they would have made a number magical if there was an inherent problem with it. In conclusion (of the introduction), I know the risks but I am none the less going to give it a shot. If you are not completely satisfied with this product, just send any unused portion to the address provided for a full refund.

In case you didn’t already know, I left my job at Saxe, Inc. Among other things, the thought of developing software to help companies send out more junk mail slowly wore down my will to live. After a while I would wake up in the morning and stare at the ceiling thinking the world would be a better place if I just called in sick for the day. Even the lure of the cappuccino machine and the ping pong table (see last year’s Christmas letter) wasn’t enough to convince me to stay. My departure was civil and professional, considering the fact that several of the upper level managers were (and to the best of my knowledge still are) minions of Satan.

One of the last things I did before leaving Saxe was use up all of my vacation time on a road trip to see the Indianapolis 500. My friend Tina and I drove a total of 2,048 miles to watch thirty-three men drive around a big loop 200 times. Of course not all of them made it all the way through to finish the race. I don’t have exact numbers, but quite a few of the racers stopped themselves by smashing into the outside walls, a few just ran into each other, and then there was one guy who was driving along minding his own business when his car just caught on fire. I felt bad for the guy, but then a bunch of people came along and extinguished him.

The sheer magnitude of the Indianapolis 500 is impressive. Hundreds of thousands of people converge to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway one day a year to see the big race. The planning required to pull something like this off is extensive– roads are blocked off, businesses are closed down, and special busses are brought in to move the masses more efficiently. Every effort is made to ensure the audience enjoys the race. Having taken all of this into consideration, I don’t understand why they built one of the world’s largest racing facilities in a climate that on average receives more precipitation during the last weekend in May than the entire Amazon Basin gets all year. I guess I am still a little bitter about the fact that we were forced to go to the race track three different days before the race track was dry enough to get the race finished.

I really should have had a new job lined up BEFORE I left my old job at Saxe, but then it would have been a lot harder to take the entire summer off. After a few weeks of doing no productive work, I realized my summer needed a little more structure. Applying the theory that there cannot be light without darkness, good without evil, and “tastes great” without “less filling” to my otherwise unproductive summer free time, I decided to go back to school to start working toward my Masters Degree. After a rather flimsy search, I decided to take a graduate level mathematics class at the University of Colorado at Denver. It was rough, but twice a week all summer I got up, shaved, showered, and made my way to downtown Denver in time for my 4 PM class– even if it was raining. A lesser person might have just stayed home and watched that old episode of “The A Team” where George Peppard and company save the defenseless workers from the evil bad guy while narrowly eluding the military forces that are relentlessly pursuing them for the crime they didn’t commit. You know the one. Anyway, I got through summer school with only minor bruises and am planning on receiving my Masters degree sometime in the next 8 to 10 years.

All good things must come to an end, and my “summer of unemployment” was no exception. After evaluating my bank account, I begrudgingly realized that an “autumn of unemployment” was not a financial option. I started sending my resume out to companies and eventually was hired at company called Rogue Wave Software. Rogue Wave’s current focus involves brokering brides of the Philippines to wealthy but socially underdeveloped gentlemen. Of course it’s all a front to hide the fact they are really developing, marketing, and supporting digital dynamic reusable hierarchical multi-platform modularized procedural language libraries.

I am currently working in the Technical Support division of Rogue Wave Software. We have constructed an international array of computers connected through a highly evolved network of PPP, ISDN, and T1 telecommunication lines that allow for the fast, efficient, and reliable movement of information allowing us to seamlessly communicate in our ever increasing global community. Does this investment in time and money improve our relationship with our customers? I don’t know, but it runs Quake really well.

One of the more interesting aspects of this job, besides, of course, playing Quake, involves the notion that part of our responsibility involves helping the customers so they don’t have to call us in the first place. To achieve this goal we are constantly reporting bugs in our software, finding problems with our documentation, and publishing helpful hints on the Internet. The more successful we become at this venture the more people get fired due to a decrease in the number of customer calls. But, since most of us in technical support were just recently hired, we are only performing our jobs at a level where our wages are garnished.

With the possible exception of leaving a bunch of store bought tortillas in my refrigerator for an entire year just to see what would happen (they shattered when I tried to move them), I believe that my crowning accomplishment of the year would have to be the day that I completed all the levels on the “Duke Nukem 3D” CD that I bought for my computer in January. Anyone can get through a few levels and then give up, but I had what it takes to get through all 30 levels (and one of the secret levels that I am not allowed to talk about) without getting burned out. Sure, I could have stopped half way through and gone outside or read a book, but that would have been a cop out. I stuck by my guns– knowing that I made it down a path where so few see any value whatsoever.

I am sending this letter by E-mail as much as possible in an effort to promote living environmentally friendly lifestyles. Remember to recycle folks, because if you don’t all of us will have to live with the garbage until the sun runs out of fuel and collapses on itself with the resulting explosion enveloping the planet Earth as we know it– instantaneously converting countless generations of accomplishments back into the basic building blocks of matter from which we were created. And that’s a long time.

That about wraps things up here. If you ever question how to live your life, just remember what everyone tells John Cusack in the movie “Better Off Dead”– “Go that way really fast. If something gets in your way, turn.”