Georeactor Blog

The galactic holo web says to wash rice before it goes in the rice cooker.
Yeah I know that, but I don't have a ton of water for this kind of thing, gotta shake the dust out of my rice stash. Next time in town I could get a new bag and start over. Maybe someone at the bazaar will have started importing prime steaks from Naboo. Instead I show up and it's a bunch of unidentifiable shit. You're in a desert, the local fauna is all slugs and those things that came before Jawas, just ship meat in from another planet. How much would it cost?

So at the market, they think I'm a vegetarian. They see me and bring out a bunch of assorted desert greens and say it's honorable and Jedi-like for me to be a vegetarian. Is this really what's going to blow my cover? And there was never a Jedi rule about this, but I can't correct them. My god did we never run one ad in this sector? People always tell me wild stories about Jedis. Then they got all that whack misinformation about how the Clone Wars started. I was right there - I was the one who found where the clones were being manufactured. And I have to listen to the tailor at Robe Runner hold court babbling about it, and I have to go uh-huh, sure. Dude thinks that Count Dooku is still alive and running things. Now I didn't see the moment he got got, but… I saw enough.
Back to the meat. What makes you think I can chew and digest the meat from something that originated on this planet? It's not like we are based on the same cells, right. "Carbon based," yeah sure. One day I can't take it and buy some of the meat. It's so gamey. The fat is all wrong.
Soup stock: B+.

There are so many things which could have gone the other way and then I'd have my tiny home on another planet. I was young and easily influenced when - ok even before I first visited the planet, I had a 1:1 meeting with Yoda. He was already at that age where you think, is that peak acuity for someone from his planet? I don't know, what if this is the part of the life cycle where you just humor grandpa, and we're still letting him carry in the Jedi Temple. The Coruscant-based demographers didn't find a statistically significant population of his people, and in cases like that, probably half of the information on the holo web is wrong. The Jedi org was super progressive and people could join from any planet, even mine lmao, but the health insurance for an out-of-network out-of-actuary species… wonder if any of those records survived.
More on point, he directs me to handle a trade dispute on Naboo. Finally a planet I've heard of before, one I can pronounce. I didn't know about the beef then. But the more he says trade and blockade, I say look I did all of this martial arts, lightsaber training. Do they really care that much if I sit there and facilitate? Yes Jedi have a lot of prestige, it will signify that the negotiation is important. So then I ever-so-delicately asked about slavery, right, this galactic republic has light speed energy on tap, yet still has slavery. I saw a holo documentary about it with the guys from the diner, they are actually really passionate about it. And Yoda, we are these noble knights, when are we going to free some folks. I'm not an economist (i.e. not a trade expert), but there are probably a few jobs for them here in the Jedi temple, like a tour guide, docent. "Proper Galactic do they speak?", he asks. And you're not supposed to get mad.
So not long after that, I'm on Tatooine and I see the slavery for myself for the first time. I got all fired up on behalf of my diner guys, and Qui-Gon was all, nah I'm more fired up, I'm going to bet our ship. I tried not to take it so seriously 'cause I figured there was a larger scheme in motion to break the whole network from the top down and free everyone. We wouldn't really force this slave kid to risk his life in a dangerous race, what I pictured was at the last minute we swoop in, kid and his mommy jump in. But it wasn't like a movie at all. And when Qui-Gon brought up the midi-chlorian count - he kept that old mumbo-jumbo around but otherwise was a good mentor to spar with. I tried a little Socratic criticism, I pointed out that Yoda doesn't have this high of a count. Man, I could have just fudged the fucking numbers on the fake fucking test.

I almost wonder if it'd be better to stay on that lava planet. I'm getting cooked every day that I go outside, either way. Agoraphobia. The Jedi health plan gave me an app which still works offline and tells me it's agoraphobia, but it really is brutal out there, and there are these bandits, even. I'm not some bigot, I'm sure that they have a whole society with their own schools and actuaries, but I haven't seen it. They must all be underground. They're the real agoraphobes.

Yoda said that he would project himself and speak to me from the afterlife. I know, I know. The thought of spending the eternal afterlife talking philosophy with these guys is intimidating. I don't dwell on it, and he hasn't shown up, so maybe I'm in the clear.
Maybe in the afterlife I will have a bit more freedom. One time I was captured by these bugs and put into a giant coliseum that they built specially to torture flightless creatures. There was some downtime before, and all I knew was the Jedi code, so I talk about our ideology with the guards. On my home planet we built coliseums to fight each other, which is fucking nuts, so even though they're bugs, their version was cleaner and maybe they would get it. This guy counters by telling me about the bug afterlife. They've incorporated planets into it, and there are three levels, and I'm like OK this is a little interesting, but skip ahead to where a non-bug like me would go. Dude had a script and stuck to it.

The holo rice cooker beeps, and I spoon out a nice portion of rice, some of those desert greens, and a line of sriracha, the one grown on the original planet and not the name brand.
I take one bite and there's the unmistakeable desert grit.
I hate sand.