Date:	2008-05-08 01:34
Subject:	Four posts in one!
Security:	Public
Mood:	happy
Music:	Into The Fold by Luna

The summer is here. It was gamboling in the back yard this afternoon, fluffing up its feathers and squorking and such, so I put on my work jeans and walked out in bare feet to turn over the garden with it. We have a dirt bed full of happy-looking worms, and mint that survived the winter. The plan is to install basil, cherry tomatoes, parsley, and rainbow peppers, unless something else looks better at the farmers' market.

Perhaps this is more interesting to me, putative novel-writer, than to you, but Jeff VanderMeer has opened the briefcase containing his novel-in-progress, Finch, and strewn the contents all over his blog. I only figured out how to take notes for my own writing about a year and a half ago, and I'm fascinated by glimpses behind other authors' curtains.

There was some commentary enthusiasm for the pizza experiments I wrote about yesterday, and since they tasted just as good tonight I thought I'd post more details on the apple-pepper tart. I:

• turned the leftover pizza dough (about 1/6 a full recipe) into a mini-pizza with a pinched-up rim, then lay down a bed of mozzarella.
• cut about nine thin half-apple slices and wrapped them in inch-wide strips of prosciutto, then arranged them in a pinwheel on the crust.
• dumped about half a cup of finely shredded hard parmesan on top, followed by about thirty or forty grinds of black pepper.
• baked it for ten minutes or so in a 475° oven, until the parmesan was a brittle brown lacework.

Date:	2008-05-06 18:35
Subject:	The winner of tonight's quickfire challenge is...
Security:	Public
Mood:	full
Music:	Remember (Walkin' In The Sand) by The Shangri-Las

Pizza experiments tonight: a white pizza with prosciutto, thin-sliced red pepper, and caramelized onions; and, to use the leftover dough, a prosciutto-apple tart buried in shredded parmesan and rather a lot of black pepper.

Score.

Date:	2008-05-02 12:14
Subject:	Mutiny at the Harvard-Smithsonian
Security:	Public
Mood:	excited
Music:	When It Rains It Snows by They Might Be Giants

There will be a free MST3K showing at Harvard on Saturday. I'm gonna be there, despite the high school anxiety dream I had about it last night. (No kidding! I also dreamed about chatting with Tom Petty about the Don't Come Around Here No More video at a rest stop picnic table! So maybe he'll be there!) Doors open at 6:30; show starts at 7:00.

The film is Space Mutiny, featuring a sluggish thrilling chase through a concrete factory basement a futuristic spaceship on golf carts hi-speed future-cars! Watch for the guy who dies in act 2 and is manning the bridge in act 4.

Date:	2008-04-29 03:13
Subject:	Hnelc.
Security:	Public
Mood:	drained
Music:	Let The Bells Ring by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

Four good things:

1. The mouthwatering mix-n-match pork tacos at Chipotle.
2. New Ecco sandals.
3. The best robot-themed T-shirt ever, currently snuggled around my torso.
4. Finding a way around the dead weight scene I've been banging my head bloody against for the last week.

Date:	2008-04-25 01:17
Subject:	Anyone else feel the need for soothing imagery?
Security:	Public
Mood:	optimistic
Music:	Father And Son by Francis Dunnery

• My neighbors' house, the one with the bright green door, was burning this morning. There was a plume of white smoke coming from the center of the roof, like cotton batting being pulled from a small hole. I smelled it in the shower. The firefighters knocked out windows with their axes, and shot out the roof from within with high-pressure jets of water. When I got home from work, someone was throwing garbage bags full of sodden possessions out the third-story window. (I think nobody was hurt. & I think most of the house survived.)


• Barack Obama performed as expected in Pennsylvania, which is to say not well enough to put this limping, snarling, finger-biting primary out of its misery.


• adfamiliares's laptop is experiencing kernel panics whenever Airport is on. This is apparently a known problem with G4 iBooks, because the soldered-in Airport card cracks its solder after a while. It's a $1000 repair, because Apple isn't acknowledging this design flaw anywhere but in Denmark.¹


• I've spent the day disagreeing with Jeff VanderMeer, who I respect highly, about boob-groping. [To clarify: Jeff was the one saying it was dumb and immature; I was on the side of the gropers, provisionally.]


• I've been generally down for the last 36 hours or so. Not sure why. Things seem stressful and insurmountable. There are barriers between us all.

Date:	2008-04-19 15:10
Subject:	Photograph or charcoal? You decide!
Security:	Public
Mood:	pleased
Music:	It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry by Taj Mahal

Date:	2008-04-19 03:57
Subject:	"I have been...and always will be...your mouse."
Security:	Public
Mood:	sleepy
Music:	Dolphin by Poe

Date:	2008-04-15 02:40
Subject:	Covetous, old-skool
Security:	Public
Mood:	dorky
Music:	Objects Of My Affection by Peter Bjorn and John

Every time I go into Diesel these days, I have to ask myself this question: "Can I justify spending $500 for a perfect 3' x 4' acrylic-on-canvas reproduction of the box art for the Atari 2600 game Barnstorming, from Activision?"

No. No I cannot.

Nor River Raid.

Date:	2008-04-13 01:15
Subject:	Am I Blu?
Security:	Public
Mood:	sleepy
Music:	I Eat Kids by Barry Louis Polisar

My DVD player died in the middle of MST3K last night. It choked to death on Pod People, as far as I can tell. Its last words flashed on the little LED display: "No...no more...no more...bad movies...." I did a little necromancy today with a screwdriver and some Q-tips, to no avail.

So, time for a new DVD player. It seems like it would be peevish to not take this opportunity to upgrade to Blu-Ray, now that the format wars are over. Has anyone got any advice or experience? Key features: backwards compatibility with DVD and CD and the various hyphenates; a sub-$500 price tag; component video outputs; good surround sound support. My TV isn't HD, but my next one presumably will be.

Date:	2008-04-08 20:26
Subject:	Noodling
Security:	Public
Mood:	full
Music:	Hollywood Freaks by Beck

One thing Super 88 provides to me is a cornucopia of pot noodles, shipped direct from Vietnam and Japan and Thailand. Brilliantly, they now make ramen in round bricks, so they actually fit nicely in the pot. And the flavor selection goes far beyond pork-beef-chicken-shrimp.

The noodles always come with a packet of the salty soup base we expect to find in ramen noodles (though it's often, unexpectedly, 75% cayenne), but there's always a second packet, and often a third: a flavored oil packet, or a freeze-dried packet of veggies or squid bits that expand eightfold when they hit the hot water. Today, the instructions on the shoyu-flavor package included the step "3. Serve with seaweed," and indeed I found a little packet of delicate seaweed strips, the size of paper matches, packed in beside the noodles.

But the winner, hands down, is the miso-flavor kitsune udon noodle with fried bean curd. The curd sits loose in the package, like a mustard-yellow stick of gently corrugated baseball-card gum. When you break it into bits and drop the bits into the water, they expand into small, faintly sweet sponges that soak up the broth and deliver it to your tongue in a squelching wash of flavor. Joy!

Next week, I will try the durian-flavor beverage drink.

I've been delinquent in my photo posting, mostly because of some technical issues with iPhoto, and the daunting backlog that's arisen because of it. But I've finally posted a few pictures from Arisia, Hogmanay, and the Gods in Color exhibit at the Sackler. (prof_fran, sorry it took so long to get them online! This link should bring them all up if you'd still like to use them for your classes.)

I managed to catch the elevators at Arisia just as they went into hyperspace.

( More behind here... )

I haven't been posting the writing updates, have I? Well, here's one: I'm nearing the end of chapter thirteen now, which is a long letter from one character to another. It's relaxing to write in first person for a change—it's so much easier to justify minor structural digressions and stylistic oddities when you're filtering the words through someone's perceptions. I got to make a subtle metaphor about ink, too, which involved oak galls.

The goal for tonight was to reach page 245, which is just what I did, and what I just did. Since I hit page 200 at the end of 2007, that makes 45 pages in the last ninety days or so. Half a page a day—not the pace I hope to set in general, but respectable, respectable. I still fritter and mope and quail more than I should, but the pages pile up.

I have, with grave concern, noticed yet another hole in English orthography. We have no fewer than three ways to mark a vowel as being the kernel of its own syllable: the diaeresis (¨), which tells us two vowels are pronounced individually and not as a diphthong ("naïve" is thus not pronounced "nave"); and the grave (`) and acute (´) accents, both of which can be used poetically to tell us a vowel is not silent ("learnéd" is a two-syllable word).

What we do not have is a way of saying, "This is just part of the previous syllable—please do not pronounce this vowel." We need an anti-diaeresis, if you will. (I propose the name "imodiuesis", and if you get that barely perceptible joke then my hat is off to you.) It would come in handy, for instance, in the sentence, "All candles are wicked." As it stands now, I am casting unfair aspersions on the character of all candles, and I really shouldn't.

Date:	2008-03-29 02:47
Subject:	Seren-dippity-doo
Security:	Public
Mood:	jubilant
Music:	Malibu Love Nest by Luna

Saw Flansie and Linnell in concert tonight, all because I happened to be passing by the Somerville Theater just as some feller was asking if they had any TMBG tickets left. "Yes," I overheard the box officer say. "They're $45." I hustled along to the ATM and withdrew a couple of twenties, then hustled back and found out I'd misheard by a factor of 80% — they were only $25. Score! I wound up with a great seat, center orchestra aisle. (Not that I spent any time in it.) After a basket of pork tacos at Chipotle Grill and a mocha chai + gooey brownie at Diesel, I was full of caffeine and sugar and pork and ready to rock. \m/ \m/

Apollo Sunshine opened.¹ They're three fuzzy-bearded hipster boys, and they sing tight southern-folk harmonies over a fuzzy wall of distorted sound that blows through the audience, sweeping out everything gray and gluey and small and plastering it to the back wall, leaving us as clear crystal shells chiming along with the high harmonics. Featured in their eclectic instrumentation were an electric autoharp, a feedback solo, and a three-man drum solo on a single drumkit. I'd heard a couple of their tunes before, and the half-hour set (chiefly Magnolia) was enough to make me drop $10 on their eponymous CD. I asked the lead singer to sign it, which he did: "Thanks for wanting my autograph, Jesse Gallagher."

TMBG continued the fuzzy overamped vibe into and through their two-hour set (no intermission, two encores). They summoned us to the stage like moths during the first number (Dr. Worm), and I now have a crick in my neck from headbanging, because of how I am old. Picture me covered in confetti, hair unbound, spastically gyrating beside a charming librarian jumping up and down in a Joss Whedon T-shirt.² Ana Ng, Twisting, Alphabet of Nations, and New York City really benefited from the hard rock treatment; The Mesopotamians and Birdhouse (which opened encores one and two, respectively) drew the biggest crowd response. I also recall: Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head, She's an Angel, Hey Mr. DJ I Thought You Said We Had A Deal, Particle Man, Letterbox, James K. Polk, The Guitar, Cyclops Rock, Experimental Film, One Dozen Monkeys, and Contrecoup.They closed with the Fingertips medley, and as they were jamming during the coda ("I...walk along...darkened corridors...") Flansie proffered his guitar to the front row. With outstretched arms and glassy eyes we stroked it and fondled it and made it jangle. (I touched the strings. My fingertips — oh, hey, I just got that — glow with the power of rock.)

I left feeling a river of rainbow energy pouring in through my head and out through my toes; it dripped and drizzled away on the cold bus ride home, but I left fluorescent footprints around Boston for a while. It's good to get out of your head once in a while. Standing within arm's reach of a ten-foot speaker stack will do that, apparently.

¹ Special note for adfamiliares: a Stoltzfus named Quentin sometimes plays in the band.
² I'd spotted the shirt in Diesel, predicted (based on the T-shirt evidence) that she was going to the show, and chatted with her about it in the lobby. If she took the advice I wrote on the Moo card I gave her, I say, "Hi, charming librarian!"

If anyone would like to peek at the wedding website and let me know if it breaks in your browser, that'd be keen. I think I fixed an IE bug that prevented the image-map links from working, but since I only have an old version of IE on my little iMac I can't test it very thoroughly.

The site uses CSS, so I'd expect very old browsers to break anyway.

(Incidentally, concerning IE, hatehatehatehate.)

Date:	2008-03-23 03:11
Subject:	How do I shave in 2008?
Security:	Public
Mood:	confused
Music:	This Jesus Must Die by Andrew Lloyd Webber

From time immemorial, adfamiliares and I have been using Gillette's Sensor Excel razor blades. Overpriced at ~$1.50/cartridge, yes, but the double blades and other gizmos really seemed to produce fewer nicks and a smoother shave. We grumbled when we bought new blades, but dealt with it.

Alas, the handles only last so many years, and while Gillette is still producing replacement blades, they are no longer producing the handles. The smallest number of blades it is possible to buy is apparently now four, which a) is at least two more than we need and b) brings the cost of eight razor cartridges up to something like $24.00. (The cartridges also, variously, squirt foam at us, vibrate, compute logarithms in their heads, repel Japanese beetles, and offer novel resolutions to the Arian Controversy. My favorite FAQ question on the website: "What is the Microchip and how does it work?")

[Correction: the Mach 3 is still available, now in Turbo form, with only three blades, but ten "microfins". They're still crazy expensive.]

So, those of you who shave, what do you do? Is there some third-party handle that accepts Sensor Excel blades? Do we just have to accept the multi-blade arms race? Is there something I can do with lasers? Should I just grow a full beard?

(ObSelfPromotion: this is the White Stripes parody I recorded about this phenomenon before I knew it would affect me directly.)

Date:	2008-03-11 21:59
Subject:	Also, Diddy Kong clearly has a crush on Fox
Security:	Public
Mood:	drained
Music:	Gone For Good by The Shins

Got me some Super Smash Bros. Brawl on Sunday.

See y'all in...uh...a while.

(If you have a Wii and want to duke it out with me, I'm 0173-0988-6165 [now fixed].)

Date:	2008-02-28 02:15
Subject:	The 12:55 rule
Security:	Public
Mood:	disappointed
Music:	Grave Music by Elvis Costello & Richard Harvey

There's this rule I haven't been following. I call it the 12:55 rule. At 12:55AM, I drop whatever else I'm doing and get to work writing, if I'm not already. This ensures, once I've gone downstairs to get my cocoa and so on, that I'll have two solid hours to write before bedtime.

Or it would, if I had more willpower when it came to following the rule. I say, "Oh, I can finish reading this thread; it's only 1:10." And then it's 1:30 and I'm refreshing DailyKos one more time. And then it's 1:58 and it's too late.

See, there's another rule, the 2:00 rule. Once it hits 2:00, it's probably too late to start spinning up the necessary mental flywheels. If they're already spun up, I can cruise through 2:00 on a cocoa buzz, but if I'm starting from scratch they won't get going until I have to go to sleep.

But, hey, here's where you can help — if I'm chatting with you, and you see that it's 12:54, say goodnight and clam up and make me go away. (Exceptions can be made — say, if I'm talking you down off a ledge. Please try to confine your ledge-climbing activities to the daylight hours.) Berate me if my away message doesn't immediately change to "WRITING: DO NOT DISTURB!" Send me snippets of Reagan poetry. Snub me. Oo baby, baby baby, snub me hard.

Also, make me stop chewing on the fingers of my left hand.

Date:	2008-02-24 21:22
Subject:	Dream fragment
Security:	Public
Mood:	good
Music:	The Oscars

Sitting in a mall atrium, high-ceilinged, cathedral-like, with floor-to ceiling windows flooding the mall with light. A red, life-sized, animatronic velociraptor prowls among the tables. Gleefully screaming kids and their parents run about, while other adults quietly munch their burgers; clearly, the running kids are part of some live-action game. The raptor comes after me, and I feel many things at once: Should I pretend to be afraid? Am I afraid? Have I understood what's going on? Am I part of the game now?

The raptor growls, red eye rolling to look at me, and turns away.