This is how the day went, from my vantage point in my secret vast limestone cave hideout; I also wandered around a bit between some of the stations of the hunt (there were a total of ten). I encourage any other Evco participants to post their observations in the comments to this entry. I am minimizing mention of other participants because I of course want to hog credit for this
production, and also for reasons of privacy – maybe someone doesn’t want to be mentioned by name in a public forum like this. Again, if you do, you’re encouraged to comment.

Including myself, there were about ten Evco conspirators and associates involved in providing logistical support to the scavenger hunt on site in Vienna throughout the day. Beta and her friends, how many of them were there… seven, I think, on the day of the hunt.

1. The kids met at the first station, a certain university library, at 9.15 AM. There they went to the information desk and asked for a certain gentleman, Dr. Cosma, who was summoned and arrived in the form of Evco conspirator H. wearing a white lab coat, I believe dark glasses? and an odd accent. He took a couple of the kids into the library archives, which I had inspected beforehand and can testify were suitably dark and scary, with steel grate floors between the bookshelves enabling one to see three floors down. H.P. had selected a perfect starting place. The kids had found the reference number of a book in their online search, and looked for it on the shelves. H. had however made it more difficult for them by selecting a book at random that was too large to fit on the shelves and was stored in a secondary location elsewhere in the archives. So after the frustration of not finding the book where it should have been, they finally got it and found a postcard of St. Stephen’s cathedral inside, and a key to a locker.

The locker contained several red herrings, I believe, including a tin can of herring in tomato sauce. Dr. Cosma also gave the kids a brightly colored rucksack; the kids argued the rest of the day over whether it was neon green or neon yellow – it was in any case visible at a distance, making it easier to see them before they saw us (I thought) and for strangers to recognize them. The pack also contained

This is all very complicated and I am in a rambling mood inconducive to concise portrayal of complicated structures. In this part I will try to list a few parameters:

• Company name: Evco Group

• Company website URL: http://evcogroup.com
• Company focus: 3vil 1nternational c0nspiracy
• Company project: Scavenger hunt

Project parameters:

• Location: Vienna, Austria

• Duration: 8 hours on 15 July 2006
• Project theme: evil international conspiracy involving mass-hypnotic object(s)
• Planning start: April 2006
• Targets: Half-dozen or so very bright teenagers
• Staff: Nearly two dozen participants, conspirators and contributors world-wide, half of which were heavily involved
• Name of project: “The Czar’s Testicles”

Motivation: Combination of two ideas: a love of treasure-hunts, which I have put on for my daughters before, on a much more modest scale, and the idea that if one could only harness the vast creativity out there, around the world, then one could do something fun. And it worked.

Backstory: The idea of the hunt was to find the Czar’s testicles while avoiding Czarist assassins. The Czar’s testicles were objects that enabled the holder to hypnotically influence masses of people. Conspirators came up with a narrative involving a sort of good guy who had hidden the objects from bad guys, who wanted them, in 1918. The guy eventually disappeared, his son took over, then his grandson, and now his great-grand-daughter. The same bad guys – neo-Czarists – were still after them, as well as some new ones.

Execution: Two phases. Phase one: online, started a week prior to the hunt proper. Beta given clue in real life, at work, wends way through internet sites, blogs, and a wonderful chatbot written by D that provide clues, background information and code-solving practice (while receiving cryptic and/or creepy postcards from around the world; note: target’s mother not entirely happy dad gave out daughter’s home and work addresses to weird strangers, so maybe it was a good idea the hysterical Russian lady screaming things in Russian hysterically mobile phone calls didn’t pan out). Phase two: the hunt. By solving the online codes etc., kids participating knew where and when to meet on the 15th. They visited about ten locations throughout Vienna, in all.

Feedback: Staff seemed to have a lot of fun. One of the targets said it was the most fun he’d ever had. Beta also approved. We all got together for food and drink at a pub after the hunt, and the kids were interviewed by Evco staff, but I haven’t seen the film yet. The project seemed like a success to me, though. I want to do this for a living.

Tomorrow: Play-by-play description of the actual scavenger hunt, during which I get a serious sunburn, discover my limitations as a superspy and depend upon the kindness of strangers.

Official T-Shirt: Designed by Bauke, produced by TH. Available here.

Belatedly, a brief report. A rather elaborate scavenger hunt was held in Vienna on 15 July, 2006 to celebrate my daughter’s 17th birthday. Besides Beta, roughly half a dozen of her friends took part. The hunt took them to about ten interesting locations around Vienna.

Behind the scenes, roughly half a dozen of my friends took part. Maybe more. Maybe seventeen, actually. And those are just the people who signed up at the forum that was created to plot the game. But ganging up on the kids like that was fair, because the kids are all brilliant, and I’m not, and you know, weakest link etc etc. I’d guess more than 20 people helped out behind the scenes.

So you had this big gang of talented people working hard since April to put this scavenger hunt together.

I’m losing the thread here.

So, anyway, the facts:

About a week before the day of the hunt, Beta was visited by a stranger at her place of employment, who gave her a package to give to another person, who he told her would pick it up the following day. He was such a good actor that she readily took the package.

Later that night, she received a text message from Australia (this was an international team, by the way, from California to Australia, to half a dozen European countries) ostensibly from the woman informing her that she had accidentally gone to Australia instead of Austria and to open the package herself.

Inside was a blank journal and a couple blank scraps of paper. The journal was a present. The scraps, when heated, provided a URL of a blank page. Hidden in the source code was a message, ROT-13 encoded and written backwards.

Beta and her team quickly decoded the message, by hand, not using any of the many online tooks I had expected they would use.

About this time Beta started receiving dozens of postcards from around the world warning her off her hunt. Some included hidden messages, and other red herrings. Some were in Russian or other foreign languages.

[End of Part I. Part II tomorrow]

Latest Evco mission resounding success. Evaluation and debriefing still on-going, but I can tell you that much already. I forgot sunscreen, the day was quite sunny too, bad mistake. Beta seems to have loved it. Enjoyed the gathering afterwards, not sure if that bookstore/restaurant will allow me back in any time soon, quite a mess when we left. What do you expect from an evil conspiracy, right? Will post more on this later, must head for the hills right now for a couple days of hiking with visiting relatives. For now, I can post two conclusions:

• I have more and better friends than I had realized, all over the world, who will go to unbelieveable lengths to ensure that my daughter, whom they have never met, has a fun birthday celebration. Either that or, people enjoy nothing more than a good old 3vil 1nternational c0nspiracy. Even their friends, whom I had never met, helped for hours in the hot sun.

• Never give a high-school boy a super-soaker in a bookstore/restaurant.

The elegance and originality of Roland Barthes’ thought and expression are legendary. It was this very quality that led Raymond Picard to attack him for what he vaguely termed disrespect to the “culture

• I give my Doc Martens a good shake before putting them on.

• Red cat with face covered with grey dustbunnies smells my Doc Martens with excessive interest as they stand by the door. The boots, I mean. I don’t have them on yet.
• “I think it went outside. I think it worked,” my wife says when I come out of the shower.
• I step over a folding lawnchair unfolded and on its side in our entry way,and walk past the wide-open front door to go take a shower.
• I feel bad, the cat looks so cute sleeping, but still pick him up and place him in the kitchen. “It’s your job, pal. Go for it.” He gazes under the cabinets with more interest than I expected.
• I give my wife a thousand-yard stare.
• I look at the complex arrangement of furniture, moulding and open doors that form a sort of fence leading from the kitchen to the open front door. “There are too many little holes,” I tell my wife. “You have to be able to think like a mouse. Mice are by nature agoraphobic, for them it’s normal. If I’m a mouse, why would I emerge from under the cabinets, where it is nice and cozy, out into the looming agora of the kitchen?” “And what, you can think like a mouse?” my wife says.
• I remove the mouldings from under the kitchen cabinets while my wife carries lawn furniture up from the cellar. “We’re building a better etc etc,” I say.
• “I have a great idea,” my wife says, and explains it to me.
• My wife joins me in the kitchen for breakfast. We eat toast, and listen to the news on the radio, and to a distinct gnawing sound coming from a kitchen cabinet.

He sits there thinking of all that has led to this moment. The long process of his personal development. His family history. Millennia of human history. Millions of years of human evolution. All the way back to amino acids growing self-conscious in boiling seas of ammonia. All the way back to stars forming, to the big bang. He washes his hands, sprays a little air-freshener around and

Let’s try another opening paragraph.

You are here, right? All your life has led to this moment. And not just you; your parents, and their parents, all the way back to Elvis.

Kind of a downer, isn’t it? Evolution, schmevolution.

But there are things where you think, you think, wow.

I am referring, specifically but not exclusively, to solo cello music. Think of everything that has to come together for me to listen to Anner Bylsma playing Bach suites on a Stradivarius in my car on the way to work.

Anner Bylsma has to learn to play cello. Bach has to become a composer – someone has to teach him, and someone had to teach them, etc. Stradivari has to make a cello. It has to find its way to Bylsma. I have to somehow convince Bylsma to get into my car and play.

All these vectors converging at this point. All this human evolution leading to this sublime moment.

I hear Steven Isserlis is your man nowadays, for cello. My teacher neglected to let me know Isserlis was just in town recently, playing a couple concerts. He didn’t tell me when Jorane was here either. Jorane, no big deal, but Isserlis.

I’m thinking, what’s with the cellist names, anyway? Anner Bylsma, Steven Isserlis, Suren Bagratuni, Mily Balakirev, Pablo Casals, Yo-Yo Ma, Mischa Maisky.

To name but a few.

Do you have to have a posh name to play the cello? Not that I aspire to be anything but a crappy amateur cello player, so it’s not like I’m crushed. Mig Living. Doesn’t have that cello sound. OTOH, would you buy a book by someone with that name? I would. If I went into a bookstore, and there’s a book by someone named Mig Living, I’d buy it. I’d be all, motherfucker, someone with my name published a book!

Actually, I’d probably leaf through it at the bookstore and think, dang, I could write better than that! I wouldn’t buy it because I’d be jealous envious.

Does that bug you, how often people mix up jealousy and envy? It does me, worse than people who use the word “irony” wrong, because I don’t always use it right either. You envy other people, you’re jealous of your own stuff, get that through your heads, people who use jealous and envious wrong.

Solo cello music is one experience that makes me think about all the lines of evolution and fate that led to the moment, a close second to that is watching Funniest Home Videos on TV. With the music, you have an artist mastering her instrument and the family and cultural history that led to that. You have the luthier angle. You have the composer angle. You have the cultural scene that enables them to play, and perhaps the technological angle if it’s a recording.

Here is this person playing, and no matter how great they are, they are standing on the shoulders of giants.

Usually, though, it’s more like the Funniest Home Video thing. Gamma and I were watching that on TV at her grandparents’ house recently. We were really howling. They used to show unexpurgated Tom and Jerry cartoons on TV when Beta was little, we used to howl like that. Gamma’s grandfather came downstairs to see who was howling, that’s how funny it was.

And I was thinking, this is another Anner Bylsma moment. Technology had to advance to the point that video/audio recording devices were easily portable. Economic development was necessary to reach the point that such devices became ubiquitous. Culturally, someone had to invent the birthday party, and the pi