National Blog Posting Month, Day 30

I did it! Thirty posts in thirty days.


I love this best of all the NaNoMore badges. Don't you think it resonates with my gangsta lifestyle? Me, too.

You'll understand if I take a little break now, yes?

Peace out, yo.

PC

National Blog Posting Month, Day 29, 11:46 PM

As in almost midnight, as in almost November 30th, the last day of NaBloPoMo. The end is in sight! But I need to step on it to squeak this post in to say it's legitimately posted on the 29th. Because otherwise the NaBloPoMo police will arrest me and put me in blogger's jail.

Since my mailbox is seeing a flurry of catalogs right now, I'd like to update my Top Christmas Picks.

I have definite ideas of what I want to spend for any given article of clothing. For example, underwear should be no more than $3, socks $2, jeans $20 etc. I recently bought a robe for $15 that I was very happy with, until I saw this Eileen Fisher cashmere robe. In vivid color selections of blah and dishwater, this shapeless shmatte will delight the senses and the bank account at a modest $458. Why not order two to reflect your somber side or your frisky side?

You know which is which, don't you?

Wednesday Night Whinge

Though I wondered if this was a questionable thing to complain about, complaining is the raison d'etre of this blog, so I'm going to let 'er rip: The person whose wireless I'm stealing had the nerve to move their router receiver doo-hickey thingamabob so that I no longer get a signal in my preferred blogging position--on the couch in front of the tv. Instead I must sit by my front door on the cute but not very comfortable phone desk, miles away from the television and episodes of Nip/Tuck about to wither from lack of viewing. What's a Professional Critic to do?

Comfy

Not so Comfy

But effective
Complain about something else:



Sure am glad I have health insurance. Wonder what people do without it. Oh yeah. They don't get cholesterol tests.

Oh, and guess what? I got this statement before knowing the results. Nice, right?

National Blog Posting Month, Day 27

Can't ... post ... anymore.
Sick ... of myself.

Really.

This is my post for today.

Monday Round Up

I am saddened to hear that Twiggy will be leaving America's Next Top Model to be replaced by Paulina Porizkova. Twiggy's down-to-earth style was a perfect counterbalance to Miss J's gigantic Afro and Tyra's gigantic ego. I will miss her. But then again, I still miss Janice Dickinson. Goes to show I can't handle change at all. ANTM is getting down to the wire, by the way. Five girls left, and Heather, the girl whose Asperger's-fueled awkwardness is serving her very well in her modeling career, is one of them.

Did you know Salma Hayek had her baby? But the question we're all wondering--is little Valentina going to inherit her mom's incredible rack?

I had a mixed reaction to this article citing a surge in older white women amongst Kenya's sex tourists. Seems that more and more ol' biddies are doing what men have been doing for years: going to the third world for some cheap, no-strings sex. Now everyone gets to sexually exploit poor countries--is this progress?

If you haven't already done so, do check out Television Without Pity. TwoP show recaps are really quite funny, good to catch up or to relive. I just read the recaps of the last season of Deadwood and nearly wept.

O Rose, thou Art Sick

We've reached the last stop in our scent journey, Rose Poivree. If you're just joining us, or want to relive the olfactory odyssey, check out the kick-off here, then read perfume reviews here, here, here, and here.

But who can be bothered clicking on all those damn links, anyway! Here's the line that launched a thousand perfume reviews so to speak, from this article:

One of the more astonishing civet scents on the market today is Rose Poivrée, from the French niche house the Different Company. This is a rose absolute -- rose absolute, F.Y.I., doesn't smell like ''rose''; it's dark and musty. Its perfumer, Jean-Claude Ellena, resisted prettifying the rose and instead doused it with an animalic breath. Pungent with decay, Rose Poivrée is unsettling and gorgeous, the perfume that Satan's wife would wear to an opening at MoMA.

Whoa. Wretchedly glamorous decay, high fashion with a hint of evil. Oh yes, I want to smell that.

I applied Rose Poivree about an hour ago. At first, I couldn't see what the hoopla was all about. Flowery and musty, Rose Poivree smelled like nothing more than an old lady's underwear drawer stuffed with girdles, dusty sachets and prom corsages circa 1939. After about a half hour though, something else started pushing through, crowding out the rose and dust. At first whiff I couldn't place it, and had to take a longer sniff and yes, it became crystal clear: this perfume smells like body odor. Not all together unpleasant, sensual and definitely sexual. This must be what perfumeophiles mean by "animalic," a word I'm not yet able to use without quotes.

You know what Rose Poivree evokes? If you have a cat or know cats well, you'll be familiar with this scenario: cat smells something. Cat presses face into source of scent intently for a long time. Very slowly, cat raises head, with mouth open, as if to pull scent more completely through mouth and nose. Cat is very focused, glazed look in eye, distant expression. Clearly, an animal in the throes of involuntary animal behavior.

I used to call this "bad smell face" but the technical term is flehmen reaction. Here's a picture of a cat showing the flehmen reaction. It's more dramatic when you get to see the whole sequence, so drop some dirty laundry near your cat and see what happens.

A fascinating scent, pretty gutsy if you think about it. But I'm not sure I want to wear it. Jury's still out on Rose Poivree.

Hooked: The Prequel

I'm in the middle of a good book, Hooked: Ethics, the Medical Profesion, and the Pharmaceutical Industry. I'm not quite ready to talk about it because I haven't finished it yet, but in a display of synchronicity too cool to ignore, the NY Times featured this article today. It's a first-person account of a psychiatrist recruited by a pharmaceutical company to deliver "educational talks" to other doctors which are of course sales pitches for the drug. This side job bolstered his annual income by twenty percent and brought many other perks. However, when the doctor's enthusiasm began to flag in light of troubling side effects that the company's slide show glossed over, and the company responded in kind, he quit. This article nicely encapsulates many of the issues that Hooked raises, but since I'm not done yet, that's really all I can say. So read this article and stay tuned.

In more serious news, reports indicate that Britney Spears may be preparing to adopt Chinese twins. Lord, say it ain't so.

Hey, Professional Critic, What Time is It?

Hang on a sec, I'll check.


The living room

The bathroom

The kitchen

The microwave.

The coffeemaker

Well, that about settles it. I have no idea what time it is but if it's still November, it must be time to post.

Is This News?

Gah, I'm so full of delicious turkey and fixins' prepared by The Deacon and guests I'm not even sure if I'm capable of stringing together a coherent sentence. But, I'm sure you're all dying to know: how did the pumpkin turn out? Pretty good, but not as good as Salang Pass. I have no further pictorials to offer but truthfully, it didn't look much different cooked than raw. It was more about the flavor contrast between the sweet pumpkin and the tart garlicky yogurt sauce (2 cups plain yogurt, 2 cloves minced garlic and about 1/2 tsp of ground coriander).

Entirely off the topic of Thanksgiving, last night I was watching the local news. The leading story was a shark sighting off a beach in Marin County that prompted the beach closure. A reporter at the beach was interviewing surfers and gravely informing viewers that a dead seal full of bite marks had also washed up on the shore.

You know that area we live in, that stretch of California coast just north of San Francisco all the way down to Big Sur and extending out to the Farallon Islands? It's called the Red Triangle. Do you know why? It's because this area accounts for about 45% of all recorded attacks by white sharks in the WORLD. Guess the time of year when sharks are here in highest numbers. October to January, as in right now. And why are they here at this time? To eat seals and sea lions.

So yes, this is news the way autumn leaves in New England, cherry blossoms in D.C. and Thanksgiving traffic all over the U.S is news.

Prep for Thanksgiving, Part II

Is not what this post will be. I put the pumpkin pieces in to bake, but they won't be done until after midnight which will cause me to skip a day of posting which is totally unacceptable because it's NaBloPoMo and if I miss a day I'm a bad person.

Phew! Glad I got that off my chest. But I was going to post about my pumpkin dish and I don't have a back-up idea. All my ideas are half-baked like my pumpkin. Sorry.

But I will leave you with a recipe for artichoke dip that my Nanny always used to make for holiday gatherings. It is so damn good you will eat it compulsively until you feel sick.

2 cans plain drained artichokes (not marinated)
3/4 cup Parmesan cheese
1 cup mayonnaise (did I mention this dip is really bad for you? It is.)

Cut up artichokes into small pieces
Mix with cheese and mayo
Bake in 325 oven for 30 minutes

Try to let it cool before you devour with crackers or bread--it's like molten lava.

Prep for Thanksgiving, Part I

This year I'll be going to Deacon and Wingers for T-day. I've decided to prepare some things ahead of time, and since this is NaBloPoMo, no task is too mundane to be thoroughly documented.

But first, I must rave about my new shopping bags:

I am a very well-intentioned canvas bag user with very poor follow-through. Whenever I need a bag I don't have one--they're sitting in my car or my closet. Or, I remember to bring one into the store with me and end up not shopping. You get the point. These little babies were the answer to my dilemma.



They are so light and small I can literally put them in my pocket. Or I just keep one in my work bag so if I buy anything during the day, I'm prepared. They have a handy velcro tab so you can fold and secure them properly, but who can be bothered with that? I just scrunch 'em up.



Unfortunately I took the tags off so I can't tell you who made them. But they're from a Japanese import store in Japantown and were $2. If you like, I can pick one up for you. Just let me know.

Okay, so onto pumpkin prep. Did you forget already what this is for? Catch up here. I took a four pound sugar pumpkin, hacked it open, scooped out its guts, peeled and cut into 2-3 inch cubes like so:



You can see the implements I used here, which all worked just fine: big, heavy knife, small knife, spoon for gut-scooping, sturdy peeler (that looks like a carrot).



Please note I did this all on the floor in front of the TV. This is not a recommended posture for using large sharp knives, but I just got my replacement Year of the Dog DVD and wanted to watch it. It was good, though it made me cry a lot.

Then I was faced with a mountain of pumpkin guts and had a terrible, sinking thought: Must I now roast pumpkin seeds because they're just sitting here in front of me and throwing them out would be wasteful, even though I don't really like pumpkin seeds all that much and the feeling of gloppy, slimy pumpkin seeds makes me want to scream with horror? Yes, clearly I had to do that, since the pumpkin was all chopped and was else was I going to do with myself?

I cleaned the pumpkin seeds, forcing myself to contend with the slime. How can something so innocent looking be so heinous? I pushed through, dried them off as best as I could since the paper towel kept sticking to the slime, chucked 'em in a cake pan, sprayed them with some canola, added some tamari then put them in a 350 oven. Stir them every five-ten minutes until they turn toasty brown. This takes longer than you think it will, cause all the moisture in the seed needs to go away for it to be nice and crunchy. I added some more salt halfway through. If you're a fancy -pants you could add other spices here, maybe something spicy if that's how you work. I'm not sure how long this all took, maybe a half hour? You know when things are done. Voila:



They're actually not bad.

Professional Critic's Top Christmas Picks

In case you're wondering, here's my Christmas wishlist. Items are chosen based on their practicality and affordability.

1. Since I've become too stupid to know when I should have a glass of water, the HydraCoach Intelligent Water Bottle will tell me when, no doubt saving me from an agonizing death by dehydration. At $29.95, can you afford not to have this?

2. Because it's also way too hard to pick up a pen and make a grocery list with my God-given opposable thumbs, I will also be needing a Voice-Activated Grocery List for $149.95

3. I thought the pepper mill I had ($12 for the set at TJ Maxx) was okay, but as soon as I saw the Peugot Electric Pepper Mill which features "peppercorn-channeling grooves," I knew I needed to upgrade. This one also has a light to eliminate shadows, a pepper grinding problem I never realized I had until I read this, one I'm only too happy to solve for $99.

4. Though I was initially upset when no one bought me the Cornufe stove I coveted in these pages earlier this year, I'm glad I waited because it now comes in red. This will match the pair of $3 Target pot holders I recently bought. Although I accidentally set one of them on fire so now I only have one, this purchase still makes all kinds of sense. It practically pays for itself at $8000 (plus $1300 for shipping), but since it cannot be gift-wrapped, you'll need to come to my house to put a bow on it. And actually, since this stove is bigger than my entire kitchen, you'll be needing to get me a bigger place as well, but that's what they mean by the holiday spirit, isn't it?

Happy Shopping!

Salue to Eggheads: WWGSD?

Welcome to our first installment of Salute to Eggheads! If you have no idea what I'm talking about, check out Salute to Eggheads: Introduction.

Before I begin, I'd like to make you aware of the following:


Don't ask me how this assessment is made. I just typed in my URL. I'm not sure if I should be pleased or dismayed by this. Using commonly understood language seems like a good thing, but on the other hand I'm not intending for this blog to be read by children in elementary school. I curse a lot, so it isn't really fucking appropriate for third-graders, you know?

Today's Salute to Eggheads is WWGSD? That is, what would Gayatri Spivak do? She's the one that wrote about the subaltern. I first learned this term and her name in a feminst theory class that was taught by a PhD student who was in both Women's Studies and theater, a combination that I initially thought strange but turned out to be so right (that's for a later post).

I took this class with a friend the summer after sophomore year. The class was mostly upperclassmen. That's not a very Women's Studies way to describe it but "upperclass people" sounds ridiculous, "upperclass" makes it sound a polo match, and "mostly juniors and seniors" is just clunky. You understand the dilemma. Because it was a short class, the workload was very intense, maybe 500 pages of reading a week. Perhaps you're in school right now and keenly aware of what this means, or maybe it's been a while, so let me help you appeciate the difference between 500 pages of this:

She’s almost ready to crack! We can feel it!

Just one day after she broke the law again by committing yet another traffic violation, Britney Spears was back on the road.

Be careful drivers of Los Angeles!

On Friday, Unfitney made a pit stop at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills. Though she has two houses in the LA area, she loves to spend time in HOtels.

The mother of two, who can only see her kids with a court appointed monitor, also paid a visit to Bel Bambino baby boutique on Robertson.

She’s probably just buying clothes for Tater Tot and Small Fry, but let us pray that she’s pregnant.

How amazing would it be if Brit Brit were sperminated again????

and 500 pages of this:

"When the connection between desire and subject are taken as irrelevant or merely reverse, the subject-effect that surreptitiously emerges is much like the generalized ideological subject of the theorist. This may be the legal subject of socialized capital, neither labor nor management, holding a "strong" passport, using a "strong" or "hard" currency, with supposedly unquestioned access to due process. It is certainly not the desiring subject as Other"

Notice that the second paragraph, courtesy of GS, has no spaces, no mention of celebrities, no pictures, and lots of quotes, indicating yet something else you need to figure out. The lingo is dense and not easily understood, whereas the lingo in the first is easy to figure out: UnFitney, HOtels, etc.

So needless to say a lot of the time we were both confused as all hell, and not a little bit intimidated by all these older women around us. One woman in particular who was Indian, of the continent, talked an awful lot. I suspect she thought, and we certainly concurred, that she had more of a right to comment on the subaltern than us white folks (note: in that part of the midwest being even half Jewish was really "ethnic," because so many kids were right off the farm, having never seen a Jew or a bagel, not even the Lender's frozen kind). Words like hegemonic and mimetic, names like Gramsci and Homi Bhabha rolled right off her tongue.

We started to consider dropping the class. It was clearly way over our heads. But thank God thank God, we went to see the teacher first, bashfully explaining our hopeless stupidity next to Ms. Bhabha. She sort of rolled her eyes, leaving us both stunned, then stated to that this woman had no idea what she was talking about but was just so enamored by the sound of her own voice that she would never shut up. We both stared at her as though she had just spoken Swahili. She went on to say that she had read our papers, that we did understand what we were learning and when we're we going to start talking in class already?

Can I say the clouds parted allowing the rays of a sunbeam to pierce the gloom? The angels sang, the harps played etc. It was truly a revelation: just because someone uses academic jargon doesn't mean they have any idea what they're talking about. So don't ever assume that when you hear high falutin' language that you can't understand it. A lesson that serves me to this day.

Food tip du jour: goat gouda. I have no freaking idea what "delicately grassy, yet bucky" means as a cheese descriptor, but this stuff is good.

Om Eyebrows Om

Today Lizh and I went to Little Kabul, a neighborhood of Fremont that has the largest population of Afghanis outside of Afghanistan. I'm not quite sure how this happened. Fremont is wicked suburbia bursting with strip malls. We're talking Hooters, Applebees and Fuddruckers up the yin-yang.

But deep fried onion blossom was not on the agenda today. First, we went to Salang Pass and had an excellent meal. Two appetizers: Borani Kadoo, pumpkin sautéed and seasoned with garlic and topped with a special yogurt sauce. I'm going to try and recreate this for Thanksgiving, it was so good. Then we had Mantoo, Afghani dumplings stuffed with beef, onions, and seasonings, topped with ground beef, split peas and a special yogurt sauce. This was fantastic. Then a kabob platter, which was also good. Definitely plan to go back there.

Then we went a store in the same strip mall where I bought this beautiful scarf/shawly thing, which I am loving and is very warm:



This store sold a lot of head coverings, which prompted Lizh and I to have one of our classic conversations in which we tried to piece together our woeful lack of knowledge to make sense of our surroundings:

Are the head coverings a Muslim thing?
No, I don't think so.
Are you sure?
No.
I think it's called a chador.
It's not a burqa?
No, a burqa is the thing that covers you totally except your eyes.

What we were seeing was not a chador, a full length cloak that covers the head and is held shut by the wearer, nor was it a burqa, the head to toe garment with the little grille for the eyes. What we were seeing were headscarves, and whether they're Muslim things, I still really don't know.

Then we were planning to see Om Shanti Om, which was playing at the Naz 8 on the hour, every hour of the day. Unfortunately when we showed up at the box office at 5:15, every show was sold out until 9pm. If you were wondering where the Indian people are in the Bay Area, they're at the Naz 8.

So instead we wandered over to a nearby beauty supply and salon that was doing threading. One of the women could tell I was intrigued but hesitant and told me to come over and sit down. I surprised myself with my own compliance. But I was afraid and told the woman so, and she laughed, reclined my chair and started threading. It took her about three minutes per brow and was mostly not painful, except at the delicate skin at the outer eye, which makes me cry when I tweeze or wax. I like that my eyebrows still look exactly like my eyebrows, minus the rogue hairs. See?



Threading was a deal at $7. I would definitely do this again. But we still want to see Om Shanti Om.

Un Parfum des Sens et Bois

I've spent most of the morning with my nose attached to my wrist. I can't decide if I want to eat my arm or make a pass at myself. We've reached the next delightful stop on our scent journey, Un Parfum des Sens et Bois. Perfume of the Senses and Wood? I'm sure there's a more musical way to translate this, but I'll have to leave that for a French speaker to do. All I know is that I just reapplied this perfume at 10:30 even though I am going to bed soon because it smells so good, mmmm.

Here's one review of Sens et Bois:

Curls of smoke wind their way through spiced woody
gardens
“White violet blended with Chinese Cedar wood and sprinkled with black pepper. This scent tells a story of seduction and sensuality laced with mysterious and liquorous patchouli, and tiny curls of incense that entice you into their captivity…”

Huh. Yeah, I was going to say that next, right after I figured out whether "liquorous" was a word. Whatevs. This stuff smells good, but the people that say it smells masculine, they don't lie. Lizh smelled this, gave a tremendous nose wrinkle and said, "Ugh, too strong." I smell this on my t-shirt a day later and growl, "C'mere, lover."

But we did learn something from this scent, too (other than that I need to get my nose out of my dirty laundry and get a life): elemi, a tree whose resin of the same name constitutes some of the Sens et Bois loveliness. Here's our edumacational point of the day: Because of its drying and conserving properties, elemi was used by the ancient Egyptians for embalming their dead.

One site also mentioned that elemi is used to treat catarrh, an illness I thought went out of fashion after Death in Venice. Now I need to go off on a tangent here, bear with me: the object of homo love in Death in Venice is Tadzio, whose name later shows up in Grey Gardens, by homo singer songwriter Rufus Wainwright, who recently wrote music for the launch of Antidote, the first men's perfume by Viktor and Rolf. See how it all comes back to perfume? It's like six degrees of Kevin Bacon, except having nothing whatsoever to do with Kevin Bacon.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm coming down with an attack of the vapors and if I don't tend to it, I think my bile humor will overflow until I'm prostrate with nervous hysteria.

Un Parfum des Sens et Bois: A.

National Blog Posting Month, Day 15

Well, we're officially at the halfway point of National Blog Posting Month. And I don't have a damn thing to say and it's 11:18, which means only 42 minutes until it is the next day and time to post again. And my stolen wireless is behaving very erratically, so who knows if I'll even be able to post this drivel, anyway? Shee-it. Some thoughts:

1. I am told by Winger that I must now toot the horn of the Deacon and his new movie about the diaconate (first time ever writing that word), which I will need a couple of days to do properly. But Lizh and I did go to see the Deacon's movie, and there engaged in a vigorous discussion about how Episcopalians were different from Catholics. Here's the two of us, one raised as a Jehovah's Witness, and one raised with no religion at all, trying to figure that out:

I think one of them doesn't believe in hell.
Yeah, and they don't confess, right? Or do they?
I don't know. But they can get married.
They can?
I think so. Actually, I don't know.
Me, either"
etc

2. I watched twenty minutes of The Year of the Dog until something went wrong with the DVD. It has Molly Shannon in it, so you think it would be funny, but so far it's sort of upsetting because she was so attached to her dog, who then dies. Why did I think it was a good idea to see this? I'm demented. But I still ordered a replacement from Netflix, because I'm extra-demented.

3. Why can't I ever find anything to buy at Banana Republic? I have a gift card there that is nearly two years old that I cannot seem to spend no matter how hard I try. It's a combination of not liking things, things not fitting and my inability to pay $90 for jeans, even when I wouldn't be spending my own money. I went in there tonight again, and came out empty-handed, again. One of these days I'm just going to hand it over to the person in the next dressing room over and be done with it.

4. I'm sure I'm not the only one that doesn't find it strange that no one is buying at the opening of crab season. You don't want your Dungeness dragged through an oil slick on its way out of the water? What the hell is wrong with you?

Foggy Park Hats

Can I take a moment to toot the horn of The Mama? She recently launched Foggy Park, a cool line of stripy hand-knit hats for babies and kids. Since I've seen them I can tell you that they're incredibly soft, come in a great selection of modern colors, and thanks to their stretchy ribbed brim stay on your kid's head, not on the sidewalk 100 yards back.

I love this one
Then again I also love this one

You know what makes these hats even greater? They're hand-knit right here in the Bay Area. That's right, you can buy with confidence--no outsourcing or secret sweatshop child labor (at least not yet, heh heh) will come back to haunt you. All twelve Foggy Park designs are fantastic, so check 'em out.

Sel de Vetiver

Today we continue our scent journey with Sel de Vetiver. Vetiver is one of those words I see a lot in the soap/bubblebath/shower gel aisle. I know it to be a manly scent like sandalwood, but get it confused with vervain and verbena, the perfume that schoolteacher Miss Beadle wore on Little House on the Prairie. Remember her?



As I was looking for a picture of Miss Beadle, I discovered that she has a bit of a cult following. Guess it wasn't just Half Pint who felt that way.

Back to the vetiver. Here it is:



It's a long grass native to India whose essential oil is distilled from its roots. Because vetiver roots grow straight down instead of in a horizontal web, it is used for erosion control. How practical. Useful both in and out of the ground. And non-invasive to boot. If only I had a backyard, I would grow some.

But we know what the true test is. After several well-placed dabs of Sel de Vetiver in the "cleavage,"--whoo! Sharply cedar-shaving overwhelm like I had just stuck my head into a freshly changed hamster cage. But it mellowed out pretty quickly and became spicy, smoky and warm, not at all sweet, a little confusing frankly. It had hints of unwashed hippie, which must have been the patchouli, but instead of the ringing of skirt bells (the hippie girl soundtrack, doncha know), I'm getting a more sophisticated, sensual vibe. I'm not dancing in a muddy field, entranced by my own hands and rank body odor, no. Maybe I'm in a cafe, or a train station, world weary and smoking a clove cigarette. Perhaps there is romance. But maybe also espionage. Treachery. This scent smolders. It slips into shadows. Etc.

Perfume Smellin' Lady has this to say about S de V. These reviews are starting to make a little more sense to me, but I don't get what she means by "tasteful wetness" of this scent. Obviously I have a lot more to learn.

Oh, and verbena? It's the same thing as vervain. Did you know that? I didn't. Heck, I only recently realized that a cougar, mountain lion, puma and panther are the same animal and I live in an area that has these ... large cats.

Sel de Vetiver: B+. I would wear this again if given to me, but not buy it at $150 a bottle. Or $50. But you know I'm a cheap bastard so you should take these things I say with a grain de sel.

Stew It

As I've mentioned, a new Whole Foods just opened mere blocks from my house. This has meant two things thus far:

1. I spend more money on food. No great surprise here. Tons of gourmet chocolate, the olive bar, cheese, yummy bread--plus there is a large hill between me and WF so I get to count walking there as legitimate exercise. But the upside of all this is that

2. I'm cooking more. I can only consider this to be a good thing.

Tonight as I was driving home I had a craving for a stewy, sausagey, starchy, beany thing. I had everything but the sausage so I swung by WF and bought four sweet Italian sausage: two turkey and two pork. As we all know, the pork tastes a lot better due to my dear friend, pork fat, but isn't so good for you. The turkey is less fatty but also sort of dry and loveless. I split the difference. It's the harm reduction model, remember?

Here's what I did:

Heat a coupla slugs of olive oil in a large, deep skillet. When hot but not smoking, add two cloves chopped garlic.



Add the sausage, whole, to the garlic. Let it cook with the garlic and turn as each side browns. Browning it first helps the sausage be yummier and keep its shape when you cut it, otherwise raw sausage goo comes oozing out the other side of the casing which is sort of yucky. But part of the deal of sausage is that it can be gross but you soldier through and in the end you are rewarded with deliciousness. So hang in there.



(Please note that I have only used two of the four sausages, one pork and one turkey. The other two went into the freezer so I can make this again sometime soon. Unless I forget about them and they become unrecognizably frostbitten only to be tossed out two years from now. A distinct possibility. But you can see my heart's in the right place. Anyway, you can use four and your meal will just be sausagier. I just made up a word.)

Take the sausage out and cut it in bite size chunks. Throw the sausage chunks back in the pan and keep cooking, flip to brown each side. When mostly cooked, i.e. you can still see raw bits, add a can of white beans. Add the liquid too. These are salty, so if you are a low sodium person, you may want to buy some low sodium beans or if not, throw caution to the wind and go for it. I also added a third of a jar of marinara sauce because it was on the verge of knitting itself a fuzzy sweater. It's good either way. That's why I love to make this. Bring this all to a gentle simmer.



Meanwhile, boil up some water for pasta. Cook the pasta of your choosing until it is very al dente--you're going to throw it in the main pot so it will have a chance to cook more and soak up the flavors. For a more soupy consistency, use something tiny like orzo, but for more stewy chunky thing you could use a small penne, or orichiette are always nice, too.

Back at our main skillet, add about half a bunch of chopped, bite-size kale. Spinach does not have the fortitude required for this dish, but I think chard would be fine, too. Collards need more cooking than this, not to mention ham hocks, so I wouldn't use them here.



When you drain the pasta, keep some of the water, because you may need it to adjust the consistency when it's all said and done. You could also conserve a bit of the bean water, too. Some veggie broth would also be fine. Add the al dente pasta to the main skillet and let it all simmer gently until everything gets to its happy place. Add some of the pasta water, bean water or veggie broth to your liking.

Now check for seasoning--mine was fine for salt because of the sausage and beans, but I added some black pepper. I'm a wuss so I don't add red pepper flakes but those that like such a thing would probably like it here. After you dish it up, add a sprinkling of grated cheese. Mine was so moldy and you know what? I used it anyway.



This took about 20 minutes from start to finish and it was so stinkin good. Why on God's green earth would you not make this? I need to know.

Prayer of Thanksgiving

Oh heavenly Creator
though I generally don't believe in your presence,
certainly not as a Benevolent Creator,
otherwise why would you allow such shitty things to happen?

Deadly tsunami,
oil tankers crashing into the Bay Bridge,
people that voted for George Bush,
especially the second time,
high waisted pants,
olive loaf--
I don't need to go on.

In your infinite wisdom, you giveth
my downstairs neighbor
Cracky McCracken.
Severely testing my love of humankind,
which I didn't have much of to begin with,
pushing the limits of compassion for the enraged,
drug-addicted,
domestically violent
asshole.

In the dark of the darkest night,
kept awake by "mgmhmmgmg FUCK YOU!
ghfuthdhdfhfytrI SAID FUCK YOU!
mghdjffhshaddBITCH!"
I was without hope.

Then lo! One day Cracky's blinds were wide open.
Bright light permeated the dank gloom.
The fridge door hung open while the super swept.

Cracky was taketh away.

And for this I give thanks.

An Interlude

We interrupt our regularly scheduled post to pose the following questions:

1. Is it acceptable to complain about the reliability of a wireless network that I am vampiring off of someone in my building?

2. May I gripe about the fact that I cannot blog during work because my employer blocks this website?

3. Could I get extra credit for NaBloPoMo because of this?

4. Ought I feel sick knowing that Lance Armstrong is dating Ashley Olsen?

5. How much fuss should I make over being unable to find a good quality picture of Ashley Olsen as a Full House baby?

5. Where does dismay over oil-soaked sea birds fall in all of this?

6. Finally, what is the appropriate level of gross-out in regards to jenkem?

Orange You Glad?

Until today, what did I know about bergamot? 1. It's some kind of flower that flavors Earl Gray tea. 2. Since Earl Gray is a British tea, bergamot probably grows in India. The colonies and all.

Wrong on both points. Bergamot is actually a citrus fruit grown in the Calabria region of Italy, whose peel's essential oil flavors Earl Gray tea, one third of all men's perfumes and half of all women's. Bergamot essential oil can also be used to treat depression. This makes perfect sense to me. The smell of citrus, especially pink grapefruit--there isn't a happier smell.

Try and stay sad--we defy you

At first sniff, our next stop on the scent journey, Divine Bergamote is flowery but not soapy the way Osmanthus was. The dry down (I know now what this means! In normal people's talk: what a perfume smells like a few hours after applying) is rather soft and pretty, but a few hours after that, totally gone. Jamming my nose into my wrist ten hours after application, I can barely smell the faintest hint.

So far both of The Different Company fragrances disappear quickly. In my readings, I have discovered that sprays have more staying power than dabbed on perfume. I really don't know why this should be but multiple scent sites speak authoritatively about this difference, so they must know something I don't know. Sort of like how I taste wine and never ever ever think, "oaky, with hints of cherry, tobacco and chocolate," but the crazed oenophiles do, which by the way is pronounced "eena-file." Thanks to the addition of audio to online dictionaries, now I know the word sounds as awful as it looks.

Back to smelly things, this site says perfumes are only supposed to last for four hours. This is not long enough--who carries perfume with them during the day? I can barely remember to pack a lunch and bring tampons when I'm menstruating, now I have to haul around perfume, too? But I also learned something--people with oily skin hold perfume longer than those with dry. I typically put perfume on the wrist and neck. But after reading this article I should instead apply it here:

Time to get the socks out

Chicken Tandoori

Not a new scent, but rather an Indian dish so delicious I decided I would create it at home, despite the fact that I have neither a tandoor nor a grill.

Here are the items you need to make chicken tandoori at home:


Plain yogurt, lemon or lime juice, garlic, and tandoori spice mix.
Sure, you could make your own tandoori spice mix, but since I left the mortar and pestle back in the old county, I went with ready-made. I used two containers of yogurt, two cloves of garlic, and probably one lime's worth of juice. Then I added maybe two tablespoons of the powder, but I think it could have used more, so be liberal. Salt, pepper. Notice anything missing? The chicken. Forgot to take a picture of that. I used boneless skinless thighs but whatever works for you.

Mix that stuff up in a bowl (non-reactive, glass is good), make some slits in the chicken, chuck it in the bowl. Let the chicken sit in its yogurt bath overnight. You could also use a big Ziploc if you roll like that. Just be sure the chicken stays immersed. The more hours it stews the more tender and delish the meat is. In the fridge, not on the counter, people, and if you forget about it past 24 hours, you may need to to start over. No one dies from my cooking tutorials. No one puts Baby in a corner. Sorry, I had to say that.

A stew of spicy salmonella. Don't eat this.

Here's what I had for dinner when I realized the damn tandoori would need to marinate overnight:

Smoked oysters, mm. Skip the ones in cottonseed oil--bad for you--and the ones in water--tasteless. Olive oil, mmmm, just right.

Unfortunately I forgot to take any pictures the next day. Whoops. So you can grill these (and you'll have to imagine "these" as yogurt-sodden chicken thighs), or bake them. I used my grill pan for the creation of professional-looking grill marks, but I think next time I'm going to bake them because my house still smells like an Indian restaurant four days out.

Now, do we all know that it is really okay for chicken to have a hint of blush pink? It will not kill you and it tastes much juicier and more mmmm. You're going to have to trust me on this one, and if you don't, my Dean and Deluca cookbook, which I can't find online, also says it's okay. And we know they must be authorities on food because who else would charge $25 for twelve biscuits?

Diagnosis: Osmanthus

Next on the scent journey: Osmanthus.

First, points for anyone that knew osmanthus was a flower and not a degenerative bone disorder. Osmanthus is a flowering shrub found in China used for tea and perfume. Like so:



From the looks of it, I'm immediately suspicious that it will smell too, well flowery. So I sniff the vial cautiously. Not loving it, but at least it doesn't smell like civet ass, or what I imagine civet ass to smell like. I decide to put some on and carry forward. Pretty immediately I don't like it. It's not sending me into sudden violent illness like Poison did on that terrible day in 1985, but the reviews that call it soapy, well I agree.

Bois de Jasmin had this to say:

Although I will admit that The Different Company’s unique, soapy composition is not my favourite rendition of osmanthus , one cannot deny its beautiful sunlit quality. Its lack of sweetness is rather uncommon among florals, while its transparency and its faintly animalic drydown** further make it surprising and memorable. I find myself reaching far more often for Osmanthe Yunnan with its irresistible warm apricot skin effect, but for those days when I am feeling contemplative, the slightly more serious Osmanthus is more appropriate. In addition, the unconventional floral accord makes The Different Company Osmanthus an excellent choice for men who like being adventurous when it comes to fragrance.

This confuses me on so many levels. I have no idea what 'animalic drydown' is, and am starting to realize that writing about scent may be like writing about wine: something I am uniquely unqualified to do. Also, since I'm not sure what woman would want to wear something so flowery and soapy, I am hard pressed to think about a man wanting to smell like so much clean laundry rolled through the garden, but different strokes etc.

Osmanthus: C. I don't like it, but I guess if you like that kind of thing, you might like it.

The Sweet Smell of Civet

I've always loved perfume. Strange, considering I don't embrace other typically feminine grooming pursuits such as applying makeup or hair brushing. But we all must embrace our contradictions.

Though I pretty much wear the same perfumes all the time--Halston alternating with a jar of Lauren body cream that I've been hoarding since the 80s--I'm always on the lookout for new scents. I have a vivid memory of sampling Poison at the mall with friends when it came out in 1985 and becoming so violently nauseous I thought I was going to puke while waiting for our ride, standing downwind, fervently wishing I could extend the distance between my arm and my nostrils.

Though his review is generally favorable, Marlen from Now Smell This says: "Somewhere between a triangle of incense, cough syrup, and tanning lotion lies the olfactory pyramid for Poison." I notice with some satisfaction that Poison has made it into Perfume Smellin' Things Hall of Shame.

The crop of scents in the late 90s left me cold--either they smell like fabric softener or they're so syrupy, more appropriate to pour over ice cream or to administer to a crashing diabetic than to intrigue and seduce. Until I wrote that I didn't realize that was what I was trying to do. Who knew I was such a vixen?

Recently, this article about the use of civet in perfume inspired me to try some scents by The Different Company. But after converting euros to dollars, I had to conclude that I really am too cheap to even consider shelling out $80 to end up smelling like the rear end of a wild cat.

You smell like my ass

I was disappointed. But persistent web searching turned up Lucky Scents and voila, they sell samples of all The Different Company scents at $3 a pop. I ordered five of them--stay tuned for a review.

Let the Good Qi Flow

The last time I went to see my doctor--he's an osteopath--for a persistent goopy cough, after listening to my lungs, he took my Chinese pulses for liver, kidneys and lungs. He informed me that they were very weak, then grilled me about my drinking habits. I have maybe one drink per month, but I was so taken aback by his line of questioning I started to doubt myself: could I be a skid row drunk in such a state of constant blackout I don't even realize it? He asked me to stay to do a strengthening acupuncture treatment, even calling Lizh to tell her I'd be late for our shopping expedition as I was laid out on the table like a pincushion.

After giving me the biggest lecture I've ever had from a doctor about taking better care of myself, he recommended that I do some kind of Asian martial art, and said I absolutely should not do yoga because yoga drains qi. (Not spelled "chi," who knew?) This was fine with me, as I have no desire to do yoga at all. Since he's been right about everything else so far (earlier he recommended a better way to handle my allergies) I figured he knows what he's talking about.

I bought a $2 Tai Chi DVD from ebay. It's super dated, as you can see from the instructor's permed mullet and a porn star mustache. The "players" as they're called in Tai Chi, like the people that pranced behind Jane Fonda, are equal fashion victims. Sweat pants that come up above the waist, weird tan sneakers, you remember the 80s, right?

The cringeworthy dialogue could make any Writer's Guild member renounce the strike: "I don't know about you, but I feel like Chinese," and "Tai Chi is a beautiful dance. Would you take the next steps with me?" But since Tai Chi is thousands of years old, twenty years can't make too much of a difference, right?

Some day I will be able to do this:



So far I can just do like the first 90 seconds: Sink to the Earth, Part the Wild Horse's Mane, and Something about a White Crane's Wings. I have no idea what she's doing after that, but isn't it purty?

Steel Cut Oats

I'm always on the lookout for painless ways to lower cholesterol so I don't end up having a stroke when I'm 40. Also, I still want to occasionally be able to eat carnitas and not feel like I'm killing myself with every greasy, porky, orgasmic bite of heaven.

Oatmeal is a heart-healthy food, so for the past year I ate a lot of it--sometimes instant, but mostly rolled oats, which while not quite instant, can still be cooked in the microwave in under three minutes.

Recently I've come to love the whole grain original, steel cut oats. I buy Bob's Red Mill, but you can probably find them in the bulk section of your local grocery store for less. I'm lazy and went to my local Whole Foods, which is so brand spankin' new, the bulk section hasn't been installed yet.





I don't buy bulk, therefore I suck




Once or twice a week I make a pot just with water. Then after I put it in a serving bowl, I add a bit of milk and a dab of real maple syrup--this part is crucial to deliciousness. Dried or fresh fruit are also yummy additions, during or after cooking depending on your consistency preferences. I don't use butter and unlike this crazy recipe, don't use half and half either. Don't want to negate all the great artery-sweeping properties of steel cut oats by loading them up with butter and half and half. I want to save my fat points for carnitas. Or chorizo. Or carne asada. Mmmm, carne asada.

This chewy, nutty goodness is nothing like instant oatmeal--sort of like how American isn't cheese the way triple cream Brie is. Make a big pot! You can freeze the leftovers in serving-size pucks or keep in the fridge for 3 or so days. I'm going to eat some now.

Salute to Eggheads: Intoduction

It's probably hard to tell because I spend so much time writing about shallow subjects such as my objections to science fiction and rogue sex toys at the Safeway, but I nearly became an academic. Well, I nearly considered thinking about becoming an academic. These are technical issues--what I'm trying to say is that I did experience an egg-headed period incited by an undergrad feminist theory class that blew my barn doors right off. It was incredibly exciting and heady, not unlike how it felt watching Prince in Purple Rain, now that I think of it.

Unfortunately I barely remember the crazy eggheaded words tossed around such as cathexis, heuristic, epistemology, and subaltern let alone remember what they mean. Even now as I read these definitions, thinking it will all come back to me, I'm all ... what in the fuck is this person trying to say? But that's completely irrelevant! What really stuck with me was not what a post-post coloniamodernastructuralist DerridaFouCixous said, it was quite simply to think and how to do it.

For example right now I'm fretting that I overcite Wikipedia. I'm worried that by constantly citing Wiki, our collective knowledge becomes homogenized. We all know the same things about the same things--even if they're wrong. Isn't the globalization of knowledge not just another form of Wal-Mart? Knowledge in processed, easy to digest McNuggets? The knowledge Lunchable?

So then I made a conscious effort to use academic sources instead of Wiki. But no sooner had I done that when I started to worry that I was valuing information from the elite, white male academy as "the truth" over information from Wiki--skinless, boneless and pre-chunked, but egalitarian--created for the people, by the people. (Already the quotes are starting--a sure sign you've ventured into eggheaded territory). But then again you could argue that posters to Wiki have both computers and access to knowledge so really can you consider this group "the people?" (Quotes again). Who do we mean by "the people," anyway?

I don't need to go on, do I? You can see why I really am not cut out to be an academic. I would quite simply drive myself crazy, become paralyzed and need to self-soothe with large quantities of chocolate. But! I want to salute the eggheads that have shaped me. My mother will confirm that I always had a questioning force inside me* but these folks really brought it out. For that we must all give thinks for this has made me an even bigger pain in the ass than I was already turning out to be, a much more interesting person to talk to at dinner parties, utterly tiresome, me. Stay tuned!




*Not her exact words. She may have said something more along the lines of 'difficult, stubborn, impossible, defiant, argumentative, critical.'

Duh

I'm going to share something with you and I hope it doesn't make you think less of me: in the past few months, Site Meter has been showing a huge jump in page views, like totally unprecedented numbers. And I'm all, what is this? Who are all these people reading and what prompted them to drop by in such numbers? Thinking back over the past few months ... what could have happened ... I got a new computer ... which I never instructed Site Meter to "ignore" visits from. So the hordes of mystery readers ... is me.

I'm going to crawl in a hole now. Goodnight.

Dia de Los Cleavage

Last weekend was pretty big as far as events go, since anytime I leave the house I more or less consider it "an event."

First up: Faboo annual Halloween party thrown by my former boss and his partner. These guys pull out all, and I mean all the stops out for their parties, essentially rebuilding their house for each themed party. This year's theme was "Sleepy Hollow." I did some online research and Lizh came with a whole bachelor's degree of costume design knowledge and together we came to the same conclusion: this was pretty dull period for women's costumes. Drab Puritan grays and humorless bonnets. I decided I would be an alehouse serving wench.

Essential to a serving wench costume we both agreed, was cleavage, and lots of it. Due to my rather modest bosom, this was easier said than done. I started with a good, new (not stretched out) bra. Next we investigated potential stuffing media to thrust boobs out of wench shirt. Cotton balls were easily squashed like marshmallows, lacking the needed oomph for the job. Next we tried a rolled-up dress sock. Nothing. Try a bigger sock, Lizh suggested and I pulled out my giant wool-cotton hiking socks. Not that big! Lizh yelled in horror. And just like Goldilocks, the next, middle-weight rolled sock strategically placed to the side of each boob, was just right:

It takes a village

This picture didn't come out at all but I thought it was cool. It looks like I went to a rave but it's just their front yard. There's a lot of cool things that you can't make out. Sorry.

This is their kitchen, with a tree that goes all the way up into a skylight. This only sort of captures how amazing this was. The head looks to be a red cabbage.

Next event: Day of the Dead festival, where there was also quite a bit of cleavage that seemed a lot more effortless than mine

One of the altars

This was mostly fun although very crowded. There were many pork products of all kinds--I really should have taken a picture of all the tacos, pupusas, and fried platain and yuca I ate, but I was too busy stuffing my face to think about documenting the events of my life. Oh well.

Aztec dancers

Really megacool headdresses, with these really long feathers that would whip around dramatically. Sort of like native American fancy dancing.

In conclusion ... my camera skills suck. I promise to do better next time.

A Month of Daily Posting

In a fit of I don't know what, complete insanity, I thought it would be a good idea to sign up for NaBloPoMo--which challenges blog writers to post everyday for the month of November.

Why, you ask? Why not? At least that's what I thought at the time. But now I am questioning my joie de blog. November is long, rainy and contains Thanksgiving--and everyone knows that turkey contains tryptophan, which makes you sleepy and unlikely to be able to write coherently. November also kicks off the holiday shopping season, which everyone knows is stressful and also not conducive to writing.

But I've committed, so I'm going to do my best. Hang in there with me and we'll see how I do. Feel free to make post suggestions. I'm sure I'll be fresh out of ideas this time tomorrow next week.