*my favorite kinds of desserts are largely about texture: puddings and ice cream. i love things that dissolve in your mouth, carrying flavor all around, as you eat them.
*i also really like fruit desserts: pies, piled high with fruit, so that when it bakes there's a crunchy peak of piecrust and air above the fruit, but even more than that a basic crisp, apple or peach, with a topping full of oats and butter. sugar, yes, but not a lot. summer fruits get a capful of almond extract, or powdered ginger, sometimes cinnamon: fall ones get the classic medley, or caradamom, or pecans in the topping.
*a lot of cakes are not worth eating, for me: many bad cakes in the world. i can appreciate good cake, but it is not what i will reach for. i do like pumpkin bread kinda stuff: for a few years running my birthday cake (made my me) was a bundt cake of pumpkin cake with big chunks of bittersweet chocolate, pecans and candied ginger.
*i don't really like cupcakes, because the the cake tastes dry and flavorless, to me, and the icing is enough butter to make my stomach hurt afterwards. i do like cream cheese icing, though, so i am sure there is a potential cupcake i'd like - a carrot cupcake maybe- one year i had a carrot cake frosted with cream cheese icing for my birthday.*** but i know people are very into cupcakes, and femmes are into cupcakes as like a a special femme aesthetic-retro-object,fat-affirming thing, and that's all good, but i just don't like eating cupcakes.
*and cookies should be crisp, hard, not too buttery. around my house when i was a kid there were often quart-size ziploc bags filled with these greek cookies that my grandma baked around the house: they're called cluria, and they're hard and kinda dry, pretzel-like "s" shapes and spirals, and twists. there are a few standard shapes, but then they'd come in the shape of letters.* anyway, they're made with an dough made of oil and eggs and flour and sugar kneaded together and flavored with some almond extract, or cinnamon and cloves.** so, cookies you can dip in things. there was also mandelbread made by my other grandmother, but much less hard, and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar: when i make mine now, i bake them till hard and then cover them with cinmamon sugar and then put them back in the over for a sec so the sugar will melt onto them. yum. also occasionally italian-ish biscotti my mother baked, and from the store, those stella d'oro s cookies, and peak freens ginger cookies, the flat round ones with the pattern of holes, in a european-shaped*** cookie box.
and a final note on texture more generally:
writing this, i just ate a cup of tapioca pudding from the coop, the kind that comes in a yogurt cup, not cozy shack. i think it was my first tapioca pudding: my mom found the texture gross, and so it was never around, and so i never got into it. she doesn't like oatmeal either, but i am a big fan.
man, i like my sense of flavor, but i really really like my sense of texture in food. pastry crust, bread, greens cooked through, red peppers and radishes and papayas, roasted sweet potatoes in chunks with salt and olive oil. it's sometimes underappreciated, but i think it is just so important and just so awesome.
and i am waiting until miss rozele gets here to have some cider sorbet, which manages not to be watery at all.
*my family is the type where my mother would let us ask for specific shapes for our pancakes: "do a lion! do a truck!
**my aunt uses the dough to make hamantashen, and it's kinda good, though i do not think it tastes like a hamantashen.
***i am glad that the fact that different countries make their cookie boxes different shapes was something i had the opportunity to pay attention to, as a kid.
****when i was a kid, on our birthdays we got to pick what we were having for dinner, which was always as exciting as the cake. you could ask for spanakopita, all flaky layers and feta cheese, or spaghetti sauce with meat cooked for hours (i tended to skip the spaghetti itself), and you got to ask for four dishes instead of three (which would be always be a protein thing, a starch, and a vegetable). that and getting to drink soda and and having a dessert too were what made friday night meals different. though i was the one who started baking a dessert every friday night, when i was in 5th grade, or maybe a little older.
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http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=515
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| User: |  marlo |
| Date: | 2009-12-22 11:17 |
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| Security: | Public |
I just checked Regretsy for the first time in a couple of weeks, and there is classic internet-style comedy gold happening all over the place over there. 'Tis the season for really bad handmade goods. If you haven't been there for some reason, I recommend it.
ALSO! They played MTV's bhangra Jingle Bells on the CBC this morning and, of course, I LOVED IT SO MUCH.
Also my boss just got me a bunch of Christmas presents even though she told me last week not to get her anything. BIATCH, I HATE WHEN PPL DO THAT. On the other hand, I do like getting presents! She got me some of those ceramic bowls that have tupperware lids that fit on top of them, and some panda bear Christmas ornaments where the pandas are wearing traditional Chinese clothes - adorbs.
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livejournal I love you and I wish this was still everybody's place to be, but it isn't. Tumblr is stealing your thundr.
As you probably know, when you're growing out your hair, you're more often than not in an "awkward stage", but right now my hair is being pretty fantastic and I appreciate it greatly.
I'm reading Generation Kill. Have I blogged about that? Most of the really awesome lines in the show actually come from the book, which means a lot of the lines were actually said at some point by actual people. Pretty great. Some of the descriptions of military operations are pretty boring, but I know they're integral to the telling of the thing, so that's okay.
I'm going snowshoeing with Ranae and Stu on Christmas Eve during the day. Very exciting, because I've never snowshoed before.
My Christmas, like many of yours probably, is particularly low-key this year. I could only really afford to buy presents for my brother, Adam, and my brother's girlfriend (and I pitched in for Kim's Kimmas present). I figured the older folks (parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents) weren't as hard up for new stuff as the people my age in my family. For my parents I'm donating money to a charity of their choice. Everybody else is getting cards (I found some good ones at Powell's).
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http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=514
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| User: | marlo |
| Date: | 2009-12-18 23:17 |
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| Security: | Public |
Hey, i'm already stoked about season 2 of the Wire because it's got two Skarsgård connections (I guess they're really just HBO connections, but work with me here): the guy who played Corporal Ray Person from Generation Kill is in it, and so is the guy who plays Andy Bellefleur from True Blood.
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| User: | marlo |
| Date: | 2009-12-18 20:34 |
| Subject: | |
| Security: | Public |
Another True Blood fic rec: everything written by DCWriter16. Her fic is literary, emotional, poignant and sexy (lots of Eric-Sookie nookie). Happy Birthday Jesus and Bruce is very silly and fluffy and fun, while In the Evening and The Deep and their many sequels are much darker and more poetic.
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http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=513
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How could I have forgotten that I saw Sleater-Kinney in concert? Yet apparently I have, and I did.
I'd also forgotten how awesome Hedwig and the Angry Inch is. And, of course, the S-K cover of "Angry Inch" is the fucking bomb.
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I forgot I knew this (hint, it's Latin): "Borg sumus. Assimilatus eris. Repugnatia futilis est."
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| User: | marlo |
| Date: | 2009-12-17 22:05 |
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| Security: | Public |
Adam got a trainer and his rollers set up so we can both work out riding our bikes in the living room. I'm out of shape, so 30 minutes of it tired me out this evening. I'll slowly work my way back. I'm feeling endorphin-y right now. Good stuff.
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DOWNLOAD (from a blog called Totem Songs)
password required by said blog: rideyourpony
Link Wray is mostly known as the inventor of the power chord and the writer of a number of instrumental blues hits in the 50's, but in 1971 he set up a three-track recording studio in a chicken coop and recorded an album of bluesy, backwoods country-rock with a folksy flavor and a few nods to his Shawnee ancestry. It didn't go over well with his fans and remains mostly unknown, but for my money, it's as good as any album that CCR ever recorded. Wray lost a lung to TB in 1953 and as a result, his singing voice is hoarse as hell -- when he's really belting it out, you can feel the effort.
I gave this album (actually, the double-disc Three Track Shack box set) to my dad for Christmas a few years ago, and I think he liked it more than anything else I ever got for him or tried to get him to listen to. My dad and I didn't see each other too much -- just a couple times a year -- and we didn't have too much to talk about. The story of our lives together is that he just wanted to fish and go camping and I mostly just wanted to read by myself somewhere. My dad was a woodworker who didn't particularly enjoy his work and was always a few steps behind getting enough freedom to do the things he enjoyed -- bad luck and trouble dogged him constantly -- and so he was always puzzled and disappointed that I didn't enjoy those things as much as he did. My dad's friends were all blue-collar guys: natives and bikers whose kids mostly took up trades in the BC interior. I don't think he ever understood what it is that I do, but he was always eager to tell me that he was proud of me and happy that someone in our family was getting an education and making it in the city.
Most especially, I think he was pleased that his nerdy, awkward son who read a lot of sci-fi novels and was very serious about church in his adolescence eventually got into music and didn't turn out to be a total square.
So what I'm getting at is that the one thing my dad and I could talk about was music, and I always brought some for him when I came to visit. I associate this Link Wray album with my dad more than anything else. Raw, blues-inflected music always went over with Dad, and the themes of this album really struck a chord with him. Link sings a lot about poor working people, about living in the mountains, about how the rich never get tired of fucking people over, and about divine vengeance and apocalypse. There's also a few tunes about how much trouble women are (something else Dad could relate to), and about how sweet rock n' roll is.
I wish I could still listen to it with him, but my Dad passed away last week. His heart gave out. Now, life was not a great pleasure for Dad. In a way, he is at least free now from the bullshit, frustration, and disappointment that oppressed him while he was alive. I hope that he is now enjoying the peace that mostly eluded him while I knew him, but I'm sorry that he couldn't have enjoyed more of it while he was still with us.
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| User: | pshairyn |
| Date: | 2009-12-17 16:09 |
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| Security: | Public |
The saving grace of the fact that it is only Thursday, and not, in fact, Friday, is that my bestest buddy o pal o friend o mine is arriving tonight, for an action packed adventure weekend!
And then 3½ days of work, before a loooong holiday break. wahoooo!
What's that you say? "Completely fitting for a birthday weekend?" Damn straight it is!
I wonder what we are gonna eat tonight... I bet it will be delicious though!
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| User: | marlo |
| Date: | 2009-12-16 19:31 |
| Subject: | |
| Security: | Public |
I've been going back to old LJ entries and tagging them. 2003 was easy, but I was a busy little bee in 2004 and it's taking forever. I've forgotten a lot of things, though, so some of it is really fun. I'd forgotten, for instance, that I wrote a character piece on my elf ranger from our D&D campaign. Oh, and I just came across a Real-Person fic I wrote from Elijah Wood's POV. *facepalm*
Man, if LJ ever goes down I will cry. I've been on here for more than 6 years. That's kind of crazy.
ETA: oh right -- somebody that claimed to know me was anonymously saying really, really nasty things to me during that period too. Never solved that mystery, either. Very strange.
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http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=512
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| User: | marlo |
| Date: | 2009-12-15 23:27 |
| Subject: | |
| Security: | Public |
Twitter gives celebrity this whole other weird dimension. Every week, Skarsgård goes out for dinner this other actor from True Blood (Michael McMillan), and every week the dude twitters about the food that ASkars has ordered and sometimes he even posts pics (see my tumblr for the latest). I CAN'T FUCKING LOOK AWAY, it is so fascinating and strange that their lives are so mundane and/or they like the attention that much. The instantaneousness and, as I said, mundane-ness gives the whole thing a reality that I don't think has been achieved in celebrity culture before.
Skarsgård's dad is a famous actor, so he's been in the public eye for his entire life, and he's been acting in movies and stuff since he was a teenager, and you can kind of tell because he's so slick in interviews. I can't even fathom what that kind of life would be like. The man has been voted Sexiest Man in Sweden five times. And now he's got an enormous cavalcade of fangirls (yours truly included) because he's part of the vampire zeitgeist and the way fame goes in America is like this whole different animal (he said Comic-Con was kind of scary and he can't really wrap his head around it yet).
I've obviously been spending way too much time thinking about this actor I'm never going to know, but I just can't help myself. The fangirl siren song is calling me.
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| User: | marlo |
| Date: | 2009-12-15 20:59 |
| Subject: | |
| Security: | Public |
I don't like Lady Gaga. THERE I SAID IT
She is "avant garde" in a completely substanceless high-fashion way, and her music is bland and boring. She reminds me of a watered-down Marilyn Manson, but even Manson was smart and was trying to subvert things, even if he was a totally corporate and a caricature.
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| User: | marlo |
| Date: | 2009-12-15 19:06 |
| Subject: | |
| Security: | Public |
| Music: | Tool - Hooker with a Penis |
I didn't sleep enough last night, and I'm always a zombie with Alzheimer's when that happens. I have to write everything down that my boss says, or I will forget it in three seconds. As a result, most of the stuff I thought about blogging today is no longer in my brain.
I downloaded Neil Young's After the Gold Rush and listened to it like 10 times on my trip. I didn't actually know that he'd written "Don't Let It Bring You Down".
Here are the books I bought in Portland for myself:
Ursula Le Guin: Orsinian Tales, Four Ways to Forgiveness, and Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences.
John Lindqvist: Let the Right One In
Octavia Butler: Fledgling
Robin McKinley: Sunshine
Steven Brust: Agyar
Jack Womack: Random Acts of Senseless Violence
Daniel Keyes: Flowers for Algernon
Richard Adams: Watership Down
Jim Butcher: Storm Front
I only bought that last one because I was looking at Octavia Butler books, and a girl near me asked if I was looking at the Dresden Files books. I said I wasn't, and she said she loved them and I should totally read them. And then another girl overheard our conversation and agreed that they are awesome. So I just bought it on a whim.
I didn't realize before that Powell's is pretty much the perfect place to go if you're single. There was a great abundance of cute bookish people there, obviously checking each other out. Yet another reason Vancouver's dearth of good bookstores sucks.
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Those elite computer hackers over at Slashfilm doctored this photo to make it look normal
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