Candy Nobody Wants

Do Not Taunt Happy Fun Update

2007-08-14T18:02:07Z

So what have I been doing with my life, you ask?

Not bloody much. But it's been more than two months, so I thought I should update. Danaan is still alive, which I consider a minor victory as I've been home with her all day during the week. I've been amusing myself with Guild Wars, to the point of writing much-neglected fan fiction on one of the fansites. I'm thinking about writing erotica again. (Have I mentioned that I write erotica?) I've just gotten back from a pleasant week with my parents down in Hilton Head. When the weather's nice, Kay and I have been taking walks with the kids in a local park.

Oh, and the year that I agreed to stay home and watch Danaan was up in July, so I've been thinking about what's next for me. I don't want to go back to adjunct teaching; if I'm going to be smart in front of people, I'd rather be paid more than a circus animal. What does that leave? Editing or proofreading, I suppose, but there aren't a whole lot of jobs in that area. I'm thinking seriously about studying paralegalism. That's solid work that I could do well, and the training wouldn't take long.

And that's all from here! We're happy and healthy; our lives are full of uncertainties, but after so many years, that's come to seem normal. Catch you all in another two months.

bumblepudding @ 2007-06-11T12:21:00

2007-06-11T16:30:48Z

I read in Yahoo! News this morning that Paris Hilton has decided she'll no longer "act dumb."

Well, good. So that's all settled.

I finally watched A Scanner Darkly the other day. (By the other day, I mean maybe a month ago; I sit on things like an ostrich hen.) I was expecting it to be the usual experience in which Keanu Reeves does his pretty wooden puppet routine and ruins something dear to me-- see Johnny Mnemonic and Constantine. He wasn't bad, though. The rest of the cast-- Robert Downey Jr., Winona Rider, Woody Harrelson-- were good, too. What I discovered is that Philip K. Dick novels don't make good movies unless you adulterate them with lots of explosions and gratuitous technology and running about. His ideas will carry all of that, but try to reproduce his technique on film-- A Scanner Darkly is easily the most faithful of the Philip K. Dick movies-- and you get a wandering, confusing mess. Introspection does not a good movie make, and that's what Dick spends most of his time on. At base, his books are psychological; they're about consciousness. Movies aren't, particularly, or at least not in the same way.

So, let's get back to Total Recall and that sort of thing. Let's steal Philip K. Dick's ideas and add guns. I like a good movie as much as the next guy.

Birthday

2007-06-06T16:48:49Z

Today I’m thirty-five. I suppose that I’ve lived about half of my life.

I’d like to say that I’m a writer, but in reality I’m a housekeeper and a nanny. I muddle through these things, but I don’t have a gift for them. There are days, many days, when my head feels like a bowl of cold oatmeal. I try to stir my thoughts and they stick to the spoon.

I’ve made some big mistakes in my life. Not colorful, pyrotechnic mistakes, not firework mistakes that burst suddenly and then fade in a glitter of reminiscence and good old stories. I’m too careful for that. I make mistakes like cracks in a foundation stone: subtle, thoughtful mistakes, that ramify invisibly year in and year out. Most of the time you scarcely notice the whole edifice shifting above them, but one day you get a good, long view and you realize that it’ll never sit quite right.

I’ve also been very lucky. If I haven’t always been allowed to exercise my strengths, I’ve seldom had to suffer for my weaknesses. I’m comfortable. I have people who love me. Always a yeoman pilot when it comes to the coasts and harbors of life, I’ve steered clear of trouble. Perhaps I’ve done that too much. It’s hard to say.

I’m in a better place now than I was a couple of years ago. I love my family, even Danaan, who is not always easy to love. I’ve had a whiff of the life I want, which is more than most people can say. I’m gifted in several respects. I have treasures, and a legitimate future to look forward to.

It’s a bright, cool day; the fresh asphalt shines like oil and the roses are a godawful mess. Oh, and I’m still reading Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, because I’m a stubborn cuss and I’ll be damned if I’m going to leave any book unread just because it’s obstreperous.

That’s about it, from here, at thirty-five.

Henry and Me

2007-05-31T17:54:04Z

For the second time in my life, I have tried and failed to read Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer. Seldom have I been so well-disposed towards a book and yet so thoroughly unable to stomach it. I suspect, without being able to prove, that the book is unctuous in the manner of the worst sort of confessional writing. The author craves, even demands admiration merely for being willing to cop to his own wretchedness. It's a form of egotism. It aims only at self-aggrandizement.

Worse than that, I can't recall a book that is less concerned to be meaningful to anyone besides the author. Call me old-fashioned, but when I read, I begin with the assumption that the author wishes to communicate something to me through language. I understand the premise that capturing one's soul, or even one's life, in words, is a difficult challenge. If, however, you think that it's a hopeless quest, then please don't write at all. There's nothing to be gained from making a deliberate spectacle of your own failure to communicate.

(Edit: Oh, yes. And I feel a desire to dress up and drink cocktails while playing miniature golf on the gaudiest course I can find. No, that doesn't really have anything to do with Henry Miller. Just putting it out there.)

That Golden Compass Thing

2007-04-26T13:44:41Z

I've never read the book upon which this movie is based, but I'm intrigued by the audience participation aspect of the meme. Have a look behind the cut and see if you think that this animal thingie is appropriate for me.

Farewell to Ismail Ax

2007-04-19T14:57:34Z

I read that you've likened yourself to Jesus Christ. Doesn't everyone?

In the end, it comes to this: mired in self-pity, you bought a gun with your parents' money and blew away a group of unarmed, unsuspecting, innocent children. And then-- too craven to face the consequences of your actions-- you crept into the hereafter by putting a bullet in your own head, too. Bravo.

Martyrs don't kill people. Disgruntled lunatics do. You will be neither famous nor infamous; you hadn't the strength of character for either one. Next month, your sound and fury will be merely curious. Next year they will be trivial.

Somewhere, someone has a line in an almanac for you. Good show, Ismail, and goodbye.

Notes on Edgar Allan Poe's "To Helen"

2007-04-19T14:40:06Z

In Poe’s poem “To Helen,” we find the following verses:

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece
And the grandeur that was Rome.

Editors interpret the phrase “hyacinth hair” differently. R. S. Gwynn, in Poetry: An Anthology, explains that Helen’s hair is “reddish, like the flower of Greek myth.” The editors of The Norton Anthology of Poetry tell us that, “Presumably,” she has “hair like that of the slain youth Hyacinthus, beloved of Apollo.” (Why Helen would be attractive with hair resembling that of a young man is not explained.) However, Poe uses the same term to describe the Marchesa Aphrodite di Mentoni in his short story, “The Assignation”:

Her hair, not as yet more than half loosened for the night from its ball-room array, clustered, amid a shower of diamonds, round and round her classical head, in curls like those of the young hyacinth.

Thus it seems most likely that Poe is referring not to the color of Helen’s hair, or to its resemblance to that of Hyacinthus, but rather to its style or conformation. Poe imagines Helen with some sort of elaborate, curling bun, suggestive of the clustered flowers of a blooming hyacinth.

Bad Classics?

2007-04-05T19:37:34Z

In his book on Ben Jonson, Algernon Charles Swinburne opines that the former's celebrated Cary-Morrison Ode-- in which Jonson mourns the death of Henry Morison and celebrates his former friendship with the poem's addressee, Lucius Cary-- is not "even a tolerably good" poem, and distinguishes one stanza in particular as "eccentrically execrable." Swinburne wrote in the latter half of the nineteenth century; we are not accustomed today to this treatment of revered authors, refreshing as it might be. Surprised, I looked for the stanza in question, and I must admit that Swinburne has a point. Here it is, with the preceding stanza:

Call, noble Lucius, then for wine,
And let thy looks with gladness shine;
Accept this garland, plant it on thy head,
And think, nay know, thy Morison's not dead.
He leaped the present age,
Possessed with holy rage
To see that bright eternal day
Of which we priests and poets say
Such truths, as we expect for happy men;
And there he lives with memory, and Ben

Jonson, who sung this of him, ere he went
Himself to rest,
Or taste a part of that full joy he meant
To have expressed
In this bright asterism,
Where it were friendship's schism,
Were not his Lucius long with us to tarry,
To separate these twi-
Lights, the Dioscuri,
And keep the one half from his Harry.
But fate doth so alternate the design,
Whilst that in heaven, this light on earth must shine.

Setting aside the questionable taste of inserting one's own name into a funerary ode-- Hey! I wrote this! Yeah, me, Ben Jonson!-- is there any good excuse for doing so across a stanza break? It's ugly verse. The logic of the second stanza is tortuous; Jonson both writes the ode and imagines himself in heaven after having written it, so that we must suppose either that the poem has no fixed situation, or that it is being penned by a ghost. Then there's the rhyming of "Dioscuri"-- the twin stars Castor and Pollux-- with the first syllable of "twilights," fracturing the word across two lines. Perhaps Jonson thought he was being clever, but if a high school student did this, you would wince.

It's not only Jonson who has his blemishes, though. Take the following description of Lucrece from Shakespeare's The Rape of Lucrece:

When at Collatium this false lord arrived,
Well was he welcomed by the Roman dame,
Within whose face beauty and virtue strived
Which of them both would underprop her fame.
When virtue bragged, beauty would blush for shame;
When beauty boasted blushes, in despite
Virtue woud stain that or with silver white.

Lucrece has white skin, symbolic of her virtue, and red cheeks, representative of her beauty, and both in such abundance that it's not clear which is uppermost. Very nice. But Shakespeare is just getting started:

But beauty, in that white entituled
From Venus' doves, doth challenge that fair field.
Then virtue claims from beauty beauty's red,
Which virtue gave the golden age to gild
Their silver cheeks, and called it then their shield,
Teaching them thus to use it in the fight:
When shame assailed, the red should fence the white.

Suddenly the Wars of the Roses are being fought across Lucrece's face. White skin is also a sign of beauty, and red (blushing) cheeks a sign of virtue, so each may rightly claim the other's color, and each signifies beauty and virtue at once. Clever enough, this, although we may wish here that Shakespeare would move on. Unfortunately, such is Shakespeare's enthusiasm for the language that he'll worry a metaphor like a terrier running down a weasel:

This heraldry in Lucrece' face was seen,
Argued by beauty's red and virtue's white.
Of either's colour was the other queen,
Proving from old minority their right.
Yet their ambition makes them still to fight,
The sovereignty of either being so great
That oft they interchange each other's seat.

Is this good poetry? Has the Bard not here vaulted beyond cleverness into obscure and outlandish conceit, the sort of verbal "clenches"-- to use Dryden's phrase-- of which he was repeatedly accused before his status as a linguistic icon set him beyond criticism? It's not that I don't respect Shakespeare's poetry-- I do, and Jonson's, too. But it's refreshing, I think, for us to remind ourselves that even the best English poets were not everywhere glowing, that they had their rough edges and their hobby horses. Swinburne wasn't afraid to call a spade a spade.

Bubbies

2007-03-26T17:53:20Z

What's that, readers? I think I hear you saying, "Bumble, we tire of your sententious Robinson poems. Cease to clutter our friends lists with this high-handed tripe. We feel-- and have long felt, upon due and thorough consideration-- that the real problem with poetry is that there just aren't enough breasts in it."

Well. Pine no more, my friends. I offer the following in honor of fair bosoms everywhere.

Upon a Mole in Celia's Bosom

The lovely spot which thou dost see
In Celia's bosom was a bee,
Who built her amorous spicy nest
I' th' Hyblas of her either breast;
But from close ivory hives, she flew
To suck the aromatic dew
Which from the neighbor vale distills,
Which parts those two twin-sister hills.
There feasting on ambrosial meat,
A rolling file of balmy sweat,
As in soft murmurs before death
Swan-like she sung, choked up her breath;
So she in water did expire,
More precious than the phoenix' fire.
Yet still her shadow there remains
Confined to those Elysian plains,
With this strict law, that who shall lay
His bold lips on that milky way,
The sweet, and smart, from thence shall bring
Of the bee's honey, and her sting.

--Thomas Carew (ca. 1630)

What I love about this poem, aside from its glorious frivolity, is the precision of the mole's location. Fanciful as the bee fable is, if the poor creature drowned in a rivulet of sweat, then that mole's got to be well down in the shadow of the 'neighbor vale.' So to speak. I daresay anyone putting his lips there would be asking for a sting.

Miniver? Why, I hardly...

2007-03-22T17:43:32Z

This one goes out to all artsy geeks struggling through the banal vale of life.

That describes most everyone on my friends list, come to think of it, but I'll put the poem behind a cut anyway.

Miniver Cheevy

Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,
Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;
He wept that he was ever born,
And he had reasons.

Miniver loved the days of old
When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;
The vision of a warrior bold
Would set him dancing.

Miniver sighed for what was not,
And dreamed, and rested from his labors;
He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot,
And Priam's neighbors.

Miniver mourned the ripe renown
That made so many a name so fragrant;
He mourned Romance, now on the town,
And Art, a vagrant.

Miniver loved the Medici,
Albeit he had never seen one;
He would have sinned incessantly
Could he have been one.

Miniver cursed the commonplace
And eyed a khaki suit with loathing;
He missed the medieval grace
Of iron clothing.

Miniver scorned the gold he sought,
But sore annoyed was he without it;
Miniver thought, and thought, and thought,
And thought about it.

Miniver Cheevy, born too late,
Scratched his head and kept on thinking;
Miniver coughed, and called it fate,
And kept on drinking.

--Edwin Arlington Robinson

Yes, there's a bit of irony in this depiction.

Okay...

2007-03-19T22:06:23Z

I know that this is supposed to be sweet, but am I the only one who finds the following ritual a little creepy?

Across the country, growing numbers of conservative Christian evangelicals are staging just such gala affairs. They are called purity balls, and they celebrate the father-daughter bond. Tuxedo-clad dads promise to "war for" their daughters' "purity," as reported in February's Glamour magazine. Daughters, in turn, vow abstinence until marriage. The fathers slip "purity rings" on the fingers of their misty-eyed daughters, the elegantly attired couples drift across the floor for a "first dance," this one-on-one time with Dad is referred to as a "date," and wedding cake is served for dessert. For post-dinner entertainment, a corps of adolescent ballerinas clad in white tulle performs a "ceremonial dance" to the song Always Be Your Baby.

Dude... she's your daughter. I know you love her, but maybe a symbolic marriage isn't the best idea in the world. You've already got a wife, or you wouldn't have a daughter in the first place, right?

Right?

The rest of the editorial is here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20070319/cm_usatoday/adanceforchastity;_ylt=AlmbdwfYh13WlsjJggKRct_9wxIF

Journal Update

2007-03-09T18:42:46Z

I was going to entitle this entry "Life Update," but that would be disingenuous in several respects. Frankly, kids, I got nothin' that wouldn't have you on the phone looking for a solid mental institution near here. So instead, I'll give you a poem. No, I didn't write it. Yeah, I'll put it behind a cut. You're welcome.

Cassandra

I heard one who said: 'Verily,
What word have I for children here?
Your Dollar is your only Word,
The wrath of it your only fear.

'You build it altars tall enough
To make you see, but you are blind;
You cannot leave it long enough
To look before you or behind.

'When Reason beckons you to pause,
You laugh and say that you know best;
But what is it you know, you keep
As dark as ingots in a chest.

'You laugh and answer, "We are young;
O leave us now, and let us grow."
Not asking how much more of this
Will Time endure or Fate bestow.

'Because a few complacent years
Have made your peril of your pride,
Think you that you are to go on
Forever pampered and untried?

'What lost eclipse of history,
What bivouac of the marching stars,
Has given the sign for you to see
Millenniums and last great wars?

'What unrecorded overthrow
Of all the world has ever known,
Or ever been, has made itself
So plain to you, and you alone?

Your Dollar, Dove and Eagle make
A Trinity that even you
Rate higher than you rate yourselves;
It pays, it flatters, and it's new.

'And though your very flesh and blood
Be what your Eagle eats and drinks,
You'll praise him for the best of birds,
Not knowing what the Eagle thinks.

'The power is yours, but not the sight;
You see not upon what you tread;
You have the ages for your guide,
But not the wisdom to be led.

'Think you to tread forever down
The merciless old verities?
And are you never to have eyes
To see the world for what it is?

'Are you to pay for what you have
With all you are?' --No other word
We caught, but with a laughing crowd
Moved on. None heeded, and few heard.

--Edwin Arlington Robinson

We're on the verge of a big Edwin Arlington Robinson revival. Also Edna St. Vincent Millay. You heard it here first.

Life Update

2007-02-08T17:45:24Z

We’ve just had a lovely visit with jyoti, who drove down from Ontario for a few days. She and I have been good friends for a while now, and it was nice finally to meet her. One could not ask for better company or a more gracious guest. I showed her around the neighborhood in frigid weather; we talked about books and writing and poetry and roleplaying; she sat through not one, but two, period pieces about the Restoration (Stage Beauty and The Libertine-- Kay and I gave her a reprieve and watched Mystery Men after that). She even condescended to page through my doctoral dissertation and make appreciative sounds. Both spenceraloysius and I had a good time, and I’m looking forward to returning jyoti’s visit when she’s in a place of her own.

Other than that, things proceed at their usual pace. Danaan monopolizes my time, to the point where it is hopeless to think of writing creatively. I may have to face the fact that the circumstances of my life simply won’t permit me to do as I’d imagined; I have neither the time nor, often, the energy, to write. At the moment, I’m wondering whether I even have the character. If my situation were ideal—if I had no responsibilities to speak of—would I be writing feverishly? It’s all well and good to say, but it’s something I’ll have to think about.

Very Uninteresting Update

2007-01-05T16:00:47Z

For those of you who are budding cooks, or who make sandwiches, or eat sandwiches, or know people who prepare or eat sandwiches and care about them, I say this:

Oldish baguette rolls are not especially good for sandwiches. They're too hard. You bite down on them and all of the sandwich stuff oozes out over your hands. Not pleasant, and a waste of a perfectly good meal. There is a reason why Chicken Curry Croissants are prepared with croissants. I know this now. I am wiser.

In other news, the majority of my time these days is taken up with looking after a cute but ridiculously difficult and demanding girl-child. I have a few other irons in the fire, but they're waaaaay over near the edge, forlorn and cooling. I hope that this will change before too long; I'll write when I have something interesting to report.

But, you know. It's 2007 and I'm still breathing. So there's that.

Okay, I had to....

2006-12-18T03:40:04Z

My Christmas song, from spenceraloysius:

Bring me flesh, and bring me bumblepudding,
Bring me pine logs hither.

Good King Wenceslas
from the Christmas Song Generator.

Pan Basquaise (Sort Of)

2006-10-27T20:19:30Z

This week on Cooking With jyoti, we learn the perils of preparing a new dish without having a picture to refer to. Now, some of you may scoff. ‘Oh, sure,’ you say. ‘Like I need a picture of a block of meat in order to make meatloaf. I’m not some cooking noob.’ Well, smart guy, how about Pan Basquaise?

Follow me behind the cut; we’ll experience the joys of overly complicated French food...

Now, Pan Basquaise combines the French words ‘pan,’ meaning ‘bread,’ and ‘Basquaise,’ meaning, ‘from the Basque region.’ So we’ll be preparing bread as they do in the Basque region of France, which leads me to believe that they don’t eat a whole lot of bread in those parts, because if I had to do this every night I’d swear off the stuff. Got some red peppers? Some tuna? Baguettes? No? Run get some, and then take a picture of them:

Yes, you also need garlic, olive oil, white wine vinegar, green flaky stuff (parsley?), and hard-boiled eggs for a garnish. Also olives, not pictured here. Now, if you’re making real Pan Basquaise, the first thing you should probably do is fire up your grill or oven, because you have to roast and peel those red peppers before tossing them into your mix. If, however, you happen to misread your recipe, you can just slice the red peppers up into little bits and toss them into your skillet with the tuna, like so:

Yes, as of this step I am no longer making Pan Basquaise, properly so called, but rather some freakish version for demented people like myself. Call it Pan Basquaise Americaine. As you can see in the picture, there’s tuna in the skillet, so right about this time your cats are likely to attack. Like furry little gangsters, they can be put off with a bribe; I suggest a plate of tuna all for themselves:

Why do my cats go crazy at the scent of tuna? Neither one of them has set a paw anywhere near the ocean, or a lake, or river, or any substantial body of water where fish might be supposed to reside. Chicken I could understand, they’ve seen birds, but these are distinctly landlocked felines. We’ve never even had a goldfish. And yet, unerringly, they will tumble over one another like mewling, furry dervishes at the mere whiff of fish.

But I digress. While you’ve been preparing the mush pictured above, you’ll have split your baguettes in half lengthwise and you’ll be warming them in the oven. If you’re like me, you’ll have a moment’s indecision when you try to decide whether you’re supposed to make baguette sandwiches– in which case your mush becomes a sort of filling– or whether you’re making toast, in which case the mush functions as a topping, as in the case of bruschetta. Ultimately I settled on the latter. I still don’t know if I’m right, but here’s a picture anyway:

Here you can see the olives and the egg garnish. For having relatively little to do with actual Pan Basquaise, this dish was actually very tasty; it was praised by my parents, who happened to be visiting that weekend. It wasn’t until I compared notes with jyoti that I realized just how far afield I’d wandered with this puppy.

Pan Basquaise Americaine, boys and girls. Enjoy!

MUSHing Redux Redux Redux

2006-10-14T17:15:44Z

I'll stop it with the 'redux' soon. Really.

Just wanted to mention to my panting readership (and those of you without lung conditions) that Vertai and Jendayi of PernMUSH now have an LJ. It's maintained by jyoti, who is better at this sort of thing than I am. In the unlikely event that any of you would like to read logs from my current outing, they can be found at http://jaladrom.livejournal.com/.

Pork and Apples

2006-10-12T18:37:28Z

(This week's much-belated episode of Cooking With jyoti is brought to you by the makers of Strep Throat. Strep Throat: we'll put your life in a blender and press 'puree.' Deal with it.)

Ah, autumn. When the apples are ripening on the tree, and the pigs are ripening in the sty. What better season for that salty-sweet favorite, apple pork chops? Grab your fruit-pickin' bucket and your hog-slaughterin' knife, and come with me behind the cut. (Get it? Cut? On account of... oh, the hell with it.)

Pork and apples is actually a very simple dish. You've got your pork, you've got your apples, and you've got your 'and.' In this case, 'and' consists of chopped onion, salt and pepper, brown sugar, ground mustard, and cloves. Here's a picture:

For extra credit, try to figure out which are the apples and which are the onions! Once you've taken a pretty picture of your ingredients, you should saute your onions and set them aside, then brown your pork in a skillet. If you don't know how to brown pork, you should stop reading this entry now. I mean, really. You think I'm going to coddle you and hold your hand? Show you a picture of pork cooking up in a pan? Well, boo-hoo. You think I've got time to take a picture of pork?

Yes I do! And a fine picture it is. While you're browning your chops, you should prepare the glaze; this involves throwing basically all of your other ingredients into a bowl so that they resemble an anthill:

Once you've done this, place your pork chops in a baking dish, then cover them with your apples and your sauteed onions. Stir your sauce, pour it over the pork and apples, then shove the whole mess into the oven for thirty to forty-five minutes. (Note: For this stage of the process, it is important to have a working oven. I don't. Or rather, I didn't yesterday, but that's a story for another time.) When it's done baking, it will look... very much like it did before it started baking:

Those fleshy-looking things are, in fact, apples. You must trust me on this. I'm not a criminal! Once you've taken a good look at your baking dish, quickly scoop out one of the chops and put it on a plate so that it looks marginally less like you should be telling the police where the bodies are buried:

And there you have it! I didn't use enough salt, but salting at the table gave these chops just the right mixture of tang and apple-sweetness, with the onions somewhere in between. That is, if you happen to like sweet and salty dishes. Some people don't. I won't name names, but it sounds something like Fencer Staloysius.

MUSHing Redux Redux

2006-09-19T13:55:58Z

Oh, one other thing about the MUSHing. If any of you would like to look at logs featuring Vertai and Jendayi on PernMUSH, or learn about the characters, jyoti maintains a very nice site for us. It's at http://wwww.freewebs.com/dijilia/index.htm. In addition to logs we've got character backgrounds there, pictures, and descriptions of the various exotic items that the Dijilia sell.

More later as our adventures continue.

Shrimp and Artichoke Linguine

2006-09-18T23:26:04Z

Yes, I'm shamefully late in posting my Friday cooking results, but my readers are in for a real treat this time. If may sound iffy, but trust me, if you're a fan of unusual and compelling blends of flavor, then you'll want to give this Shrimp and Artichoke Linguine a try. Follow me behind the cut and see...

Before preparing this dish, you are required by law to arrange your ingredients and photograph them, like so:

The recipe calls for linguine, shrimp and fresh artichoke hearts (jyoti and I used canned for the sake of convenience), as well as onion, garlic, white wine, and lemon juice. Yes, that's a lime juice bottle in the picture. I just happen to be very fond of the color green, and therefore I store my lemon juice in bottles marked 'lime.' Now hush.

Once you've cooed over your ingredients, you sautee your single chopped onion and your clove of garlic in olive oil. Then you set them aside and cook your pound of shrimp. Here's mine:

Shrimp are so cute! They start out as distastefully pale and flaccid shellfish, but apply heat, and magically they turn pink and curl up into little balls. Like pillbugs. Edible pillbugs of the sea.

Let's not dwell on that thought.

Next you add the artichoke hearts, the wine, the LEMON JUICE, salt and pepper to taste; you also toss the onion and garlic back in, like so:

Now, some of you may be aware that artichoke hearts are actually quite large. If you're one of those clever people, you may wish to cut them up before adding them to the pan, rather than upending your can into a sizzling skillet only to see several bulbous green things come rolling out. If, however, you're not hip to the whole artichoke heart issue, you can very carefully cut them up in the burning skillet, as I did. Either way, you'll toss your shrimp and artichoke concoction with your cooked linguine and two tablespoons of fresh chopped parsley. It'll come out something like this:

And this is very tasty. The artichoke picks up the tartness of the wine and the LEMON JUICE, and blends wonderfully with the saltiness of the shrimp and the texture of the linguine. It's best when you can get a little artichoke, a little shrimp and some linguine on your fork all at once. A light dish, but flavorful and well-received both here and at chez jyoti. I recommend it heartily.

In other news...

2006-09-18T14:27:29Z

I have at long last joined the wireless revolution. I've got a snazzy new Compaq Presario 5000Z notebook computer (the Volvo of laptops!) that gives me the freedom to compute where I want to, baby. Like, upstairs. Or, you know, lying in bed. Um. Viva la revolucion!

The notebook is distinctly mid-range (it's a Compaq) after all, but for my wireless I've purchased the fearsome Belkin N1 router. This thing is a monster. It's bulky, black, and mean, with three little prongs sticking up out of it like horns. If anyone tries to mess with my network, it deploys several miniature attack routers armed with robotic laser sharks to carve you in pieces. I kid you not. It happened to a kid down the street and it wasn't pretty.

So, all's good on the computing front. Also, I'm reading Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey. Yes, I know all of the cool kids read this book years ago. You can zip it. One of my many failings is that I read at a glacial pace; indeed, I have my books vetted for me, and the ones I select on my own come into my collection by means of arcane processes that would chill the blood of mere mortal men. But I'm enjoying this one.

MUSHing Redux

2006-09-14T15:14:09Z

To quote a song I don't really like, what a long, strange trip it's been.

Last year, I thought I was done with MUSHing, at least in its traditional form. I had my own private projects here and there, but as for the larger, public games-- with their melodrama, their gossip, their demands-- I considered myself retired. Good riddance, I said.

And then I missed it. As usual.

I need that regular fix of creativity, the writing play, the positive reinforcement that comes from making something with words in harmony with other people. jyoti and I had been talking off and on since Aether II folded, and I found her similarly inclined. So we decided to become partners and set off anew into the wilds of MUSHdom. It's been an interesting ride thus far.

For the most part we've been on Pern and WoD MUSHes. I'll provide a brief summary of our adventures:

Leading Edge MUSH: A seventh Pass Pern game. I played a bronzerider named Ch'dais, and jyoti was an Igenite steward named Valandys attending a leadership Caucus at High Reaches Weyr. I really liked this game, and had it not been for our unfortunate brush with staffing, we might still be playing there. jyoti maintains that the hectic pace and high activity requirement would've overwhelmed us eventually, and she's probably right, but I consider Leading Edge a success for us and I'd recommend it to any high-energy Pern MUSHer. I still have an LJ account for this character (ch_dais) if anyone would like to have a look.

Shadowed Isles MUX: A World of Darkness game set in the town of Bar Harbor, Maine. (What is it about Bar Harbor that so attracts Word of Darkness folk? This is the second WoD MUSH I've seen with that setting.) I was Owen Craczyk, a Silent Strider Harbinger fated to protect a very important Kinfolk girl. jyoti was the girl, of course: a Lupine Gypsy (that's Silent Strider Kinfolk, y'all) named Nazmiye Vural who was "destined to give birth to great and terrible things." We had wonderful characters and a gripping story to tell, involving a whole new species of magic that combined the Garou fetish with the Gypsy art of draba. The staff... well, basically ignored us, when they weren't losing us in bureaucracy and personal rivalries. We couldn't make any headway with our story, so we left. Shadowed Isles is a big game, but you'll get the usual WoD crap.

Arctic Rage MUX: Another WoD game, focused on Werewolves and set, you guessed it, in Alaska. We moved Owen and Nazmiye ICly from Bar Harbor to Anchorage, making them a few years older and filling in the story of what had happened to them in the meanwhile. (No, we didn't tell the Arctic Rage people that we'd effectively joined their continuity to that of Shadowed Isles. Fortunately it never came up.) Arctic Rage was a promising little game, and jyoti and I set up a colorful tea house in the Russian quarter of Anchorage that we hoped would become a hangout for Striders and Rom, a sort of go-between for the city Sept and the wilderness Sept on the game. Alas, we were so interesting and colorful that everyone else (including the staff) decided to make Gypsies and Silent Striders too, so that there were actually more active Gypsies on the game than there were normal people. Which was just... stupid. We lingered in the hope that the staff would come up with a plot to explain the sudden explosion of Gypsies and Striders in Anchorage, and when none was forthcoming, we moved on. Still, Arctic Rage isn't bad for a WoD game. There's an LJ for Owen and Nazmiye (dijilia) but most of it is locked to protect the OOC Masquerades of the various games, so don't bother.

Memories of Legend: What? A Wheel of Time game? Search me. I've never read any of Robert Jordan's books and neither has jyoti, so it was probably folly for us to try this game, but we gave it a shot anyway. I created Laurent, a dashing blonde Gaidin (for those of you not familiar with the books, this is a cross between a bodyguard and man candy) with inner demons and a noble heritage, while jyoti was the reserved but intelligent and charming Hafwen, an Accepted Aes Sedai (lady sorcerors) destined for the Grey Ajah (diplomats). We were going to be bound to one another (yes, I would be her Personal Unicorn Friend), but we were all but lost in the setting and the pretty people ignored us in favor of kissing one another's buttocks. So much for the Wheel of Time.

Pern MUSH: Yes, Pern MUSH. The old man of MUSHdom, the place where I got my start... lord, it must've been almost fifteen years ago, now. I've come full circle, and I must say that it's a comfortable feeling, being back there again-- it helps to have a remarkably talented partner in crime. Pern's my current game. I play Vertai, an ex-renegade and presently a trader with the Dijilia family; jyoti is Jendayi, daughter of the head of that clan, merchant princess and self-described "wild pony." The two of them have a wagon of their own and are presently wintering at High Reaches Weyr, alternately charming, selling to, swindling and offending the locals. I'll discuss our plans for these characters in another post.

And there you have it. I am unabashedly happy to have this creative outlet. I've "retired" from MUSHing so many times that I'm not going to make the pretense anymore; I'll be a part of the hobby for as long as it lasts. (Graphical MUDs seem to be about powergaming rather than creativity, but perhaps this will change over time.) If there's interest, I may post logs of my current RP from time to time, or create a separate LJ for that purpose. More later!

Calico Wild Rice Soup

2006-08-21T01:11:20Z

Have you ever wanted to prepare a fascinating dish for people with no taste buds? No? Well, too bad! You're already here, so you get to read about my adventures in peculiar but interestingly textured spoon foods. This week on Cooking With Jyoti, it's Calico Wild Rice Soup-- the meal you never thought you'd make, and you were right! Follow me behind the cut y'all.

First, let's look at the ingredients in their snazzy pose:

The red bell pepper pictured here was grown in our own cottage garden in front of the house. Its presence in this dish makes it all but unique among the vegetables I've tried to grow, as it wasn't eaten by squirrels before I could get to it. Perhaps they knew something I didn't.

Also, notice the Grey Owl Canadian Lake Wild Rice. The back of the box informs me that this very rice is "A Gift From The Great Spirit -- MANOMIN TO INDIAN PEOPLE." I'll give a quarter to anyone who can tell me what this means. Is the gist that the 'INDIAN PEOPLE' word for 'wild rice' is 'MANOMIN'? Do they regard wild rice as 'MANOMIN'? Is that a good thing? Is it anything like mana?

When I read on the front of the box that Grey Owl Canadian Lake Wild Rice is "Traditional Canoe & Airboat Machine Harvested," I went on the Internet to see if I could find a picture of a traditional Indian airboat machine. (I assume that they're made of wood, with interesting carvings and such. The fan prop must've been a marvel of engineering at that time.) No luck, alas. The technological secrets of INDIAN PEOPLE are not for my eyes.

Be that as it may, when you've chopped up your ingredients they'll look like this:

My more astute readers may notice that there are green onions in this picture, while there were none in the original shot of the ingredients. Those readers should probably shut up. I know where they live. Your frozen corn may not have huge chunks of ice in it; this is perfectly alright. Moving on:

What the hell? Here, we have a picture of me practicing my magic spells over my budget cauldron. This has nothing to do with the recipe at hand, and I'm not sure how it snuck into the entry. Once you've cooked your wild rice-- or, in my case, discovered that you didn't buy enough wild rice and supplemented it with white rice-- then tossed the rice in a great pot with your chicken broth and your other ingredients, and then simmered it all and thickened it with cornstarch, you'll come up with a colorful concoction like so:

It will look bright and summery, and have an interesting, chewy texture, and it will taste... kind of odd. A little nutty, a little peppery, and sort of bland besides. Like something you maybe shouldn't have put in your mouth, but it probably won't hurt you. It's a shame, too, because the dish is rewarding in other ways. As I remarked to jyoti, this would be a great meal for someone with no sense of taste. And I meant it, too.

That's all from here! Until next week, keeping cooking! Or... you know, not.

Why do you write?

2006-08-16T16:31:37Z

I've been thinking lately about the meaning and value of publication for creative writers, but I'd like to get at that issue by way of a different question. To those of you who write creatively, I ask, why do you do so? What need does creative writing satisfy, or what do you hope to achieve? Is traditional (print) publication important to you, and if so, why?

I've followed the struggles of several would-be writers on my friends list, and the assumed goal of their efforts would seem to be print publication. Those who have succeeded congratulate themselves as 'published authors,' and those who haven't preface their remarks with caveats making clear that they aren't. Is print publication a form of social distinction, then? Do you write in order to be recognized and admired as a writer?

Print publication also pays (a little) money, but realistically this isn't an issue for most writers. The number of people earning their living exclusively by writing fiction is very small. In most instances, the remuneration for a published manuscript is going to be more emotionally than fiscally gratifying-- in which case print publication again becomes a social distinction, a source of pride and recognition.

Do you write in order to be read? Another plausible argument in favor of print publication is that it serves as a means of circulating one's work, of reaching readers whom one wishes to move and entertain. In the age of the internet, however, this motive isn't as straightforward as it may once have been. Anyone with space on the web and a modicum of HTML know-how can 'publish' and reach a substantial readership without going through traditional print channels. To take just one example, I have a short story on the web-- I won't say where-- that has been read approaching 20,000 times. I've received no money for the manuscript, and it's nowhere in print. Am I a 'published author'? Perhaps it isn't fair to liken my story's web presence to a circulation of 20,000 copies-- quite a few people probably read a few words and moved on-- but then people buy printed books that they never finish reading, too. In the internet age, how do we measure circulation and readership? Is print publication necessary in order to reach an audience?

If you write for your own satisfaction, is it necessary to publish at all? If you've only shared your story with a few chosen friends or-- sakes alive-- written something in collaboration with them (MUSHing, a shared world, an add-on story, a letter game), is that writing less worthwhile than printed fiction? If your motive is the pleasure of the craft, then why would this be the case? One could argue that printed fiction has been selected and winnowed by professionals-- that it is therefore necessarily of higher quality than writing that hasn't seen print-- but even a casual glance at literary history shows us how perilous this reasoning can be. How many authors disdained and ignored in their own time have found posthumous fame? How many celebrated and published authors have been condemned by later generations, their work no longer read except by literary historians?

No, I'm not sure where I'm going with all of this, except to say that I'm interested in people's motives for writing and their related views on publication. I'm curious about the assumption that if one writes 'seriously,' one should seek to be in print. I'd be interested to hear what people think about this.

Well, this is fun...

2006-08-08T22:00:22Z

A short and disordered list of things that I haven't really been able to do since Danaan's arrival:

1. Read
2. Write
3. MUSH
4. Chat online
5. Top
6. Play video games
7. Have sex
8. Sleep (much)

Things I've been able to do with varying degrees of success:

1. Cook
2. Eat
3. Exercise
4. Watch television
5. Serve as a couch for the sleeping of others
6. Surf the web

So yeah, it's just peaches n' cream here at Chez Bumble. And while I'm making lists, here's one of things I haven't done in a long time, but would like to:

1. Fence
2. Play tennis
3. Dance
4. Hike (Well. Walk in a park, I suppose. An outdoorsman I ain't, but I spent a lot of time wandering in the woods when I was a kid. Often pretending I was some sort of fantasy warrior, or that teen-aged boy on Land of the Lost.)