Last night we went to an informal dinner party. Nat's Epicurus seminar professor invited everyone to his (newly-acquired!) house for an Indian dinner and, of course, lots of philosophy talk.
The tables were set buffet-style, with labels written underneath each dish indicating what was in the bowl and how spicy it was. Quite a nice touch for us spice-conscious folks. His girlfriend had happily made all the food, from the spicy carrots & potatoes with coconut and curried lentils, right down to the raita and mint chutney. They heated the naan and even fried up the papadum right before we ate! Aaahhhh, papadum, my good friend. To top it all off, there was even a plate filled with burfi, one of my favorite desserts, and a couple of bowls of candied and non-candied fennel seeds. Pure delight.
The funniest moment of the evening for me came when another professor talked about a man he knew at Oxford College who ate bananas in a most peculiar manner. First, he would sort of massage the banana.
"That's how i make banana bread, sometimes!" i interjected. (it really is a time-saver.)
Then, he would cut it neatly in half, and grabbing one of the halves, proceed to extrude the mashed banana pulp rather vulgarly into his mouth. A sort of sucking in, toothpaste-squeezy motion. We were all cringing at his description, of course, until he continued:
Apparently the man had been a POW in Japan (during WWII, i presume), and the mortality rate of POWs over there was something awful, like 50 percent. So eventually they began to realize that it had to do with food-borne illness, and other bacteria surrounding the fact that they couldn't wash their hands. So it was paramount not to touch your food with your hands. This is how he learned the banana trick; it was a habit he had never grown out of. Of course, we were all shamed into thoughtful silence with this information.
Conversation eventually turned to how you can actually open a banana more easily from the bottom, or from what we (at least here in the states) think of as the bottom- the part without the convenient tab, or handle. Nat was extremely skeptical of this claim, but a couple of the other guys assured him that it was true. Fortunately, Monte had a bunch of bananas at hand, so the experiment began. i think Nat was somewhat stunned to discover how easy it actually was to open from the other end, as was i.
It reminded me of a cereal ad i saw once, featuring the requisite pitcher of milk and glass of o.j. in the background, and a perfect, opened banana off to one side. Something about the picture nagged at me, and i couldn't figure it out for a good ten minutes or so. Finally i realized- hey, nobody opens bananas like that! What gives? But, i guess now i've learned that some people do.
And that's the end of that.
A bunch of men sitting around, massaging bananas.
High point, for sure.
Thursday, June 5
Wednesday, June 4
The Kitten Committee.
So, Nat saved a kitten yesterday.
He was waiting for the bus home from school, when a small but frantic mewling was suddenly separated out from the litany of sounds surrounding him; cars whooshing by, trees swishing in the wind, other would-be passengers rustling through their bookbags. He heard it before he saw it, and headed across to the median strip, where the small but desperate noises were coming from. A girl followed him over.
"Is there a cat up there?" she asked, having heard the panicked cries as well.
I guess the little guy was mewing all night long, as a third girl stated she had heard it the night before. Aww! The kitten in question was up about 20 feet in the tree. It was a teeny black-and-white mottled number, with a cute little black face and hazel eyes, according to Nat, who managed to hoist one of the girls up into the tree. She wrangled the tiny feline off of the branch, then gingerly handed the furry ball down to Nat, where the mewling cries immediately picked up their pace. He passed it off to the waiting arms of the third girl, who decided she was taking him home for the afternoon, promising she would put up "Found" posters the next day.
Shucks! Glad that disaster was avoided. Fire department? Who needs 'em. We have The Kitten Committee.
(no, really- we do need them. just joshin', guys and gals!)
Speaking of firemen, did anybody else here have one of those decals on their windows when they were little- the silvery, oval-shaped one that had a fireman carrying a child on it? (Wish i could find an image for you, but nothin' doin'.) Now that i look back on it, we had one on the kids' bedroom window in our apartment, but there was also one prominently displayed in the front window of the large house my best friend lived in, which was also a daycare during daylight hours. So they must have been some kind of sign for the firefighters, to know that there were possibly children inside? Yowsers. I remember staring at that thing at night as i fell asleep. It was always backlit from a streetlight on nearby Shattuck Avenue, and for some reason it always made me feel better. How would i have slept without it?
He was waiting for the bus home from school, when a small but frantic mewling was suddenly separated out from the litany of sounds surrounding him; cars whooshing by, trees swishing in the wind, other would-be passengers rustling through their bookbags. He heard it before he saw it, and headed across to the median strip, where the small but desperate noises were coming from. A girl followed him over.
"Is there a cat up there?" she asked, having heard the panicked cries as well.
I guess the little guy was mewing all night long, as a third girl stated she had heard it the night before. Aww! The kitten in question was up about 20 feet in the tree. It was a teeny black-and-white mottled number, with a cute little black face and hazel eyes, according to Nat, who managed to hoist one of the girls up into the tree. She wrangled the tiny feline off of the branch, then gingerly handed the furry ball down to Nat, where the mewling cries immediately picked up their pace. He passed it off to the waiting arms of the third girl, who decided she was taking him home for the afternoon, promising she would put up "Found" posters the next day.
Shucks! Glad that disaster was avoided. Fire department? Who needs 'em. We have The Kitten Committee.
(no, really- we do need them. just joshin', guys and gals!)
Speaking of firemen, did anybody else here have one of those decals on their windows when they were little- the silvery, oval-shaped one that had a fireman carrying a child on it? (Wish i could find an image for you, but nothin' doin'.) Now that i look back on it, we had one on the kids' bedroom window in our apartment, but there was also one prominently displayed in the front window of the large house my best friend lived in, which was also a daycare during daylight hours. So they must have been some kind of sign for the firefighters, to know that there were possibly children inside? Yowsers. I remember staring at that thing at night as i fell asleep. It was always backlit from a streetlight on nearby Shattuck Avenue, and for some reason it always made me feel better. How would i have slept without it?
Sunday, June 1
Three things.
Item #1) So on Saturday, we went on a bike ride up to the bullfrogs (a reedy drainpipe terminus up near the bike path's own end, where duelling frog choruses can be heard at dusk). Riding through a neighborhood about halfway there, before we'd hit the actual path, we suddenly smelled smoke. Like burning wood, or toast, almost, but certainly not an innocent type of smoke. The kind where your weird hidden instincts sound an alarm and your whole body pricks up, instantly alert. Pulling our bikes over to the sidewalk, we saw the roof, the roof- the roof was on fucking fire. Okay, well maybe it wasn't really on fire, but there was a ton of smoke curling off of it into the air. We saw a lady nearby on a cellphone, and thought perhaps she was calling it in, but she seemed way too unconcerned. Nat took the initiative and went to the front door of the bungalow in question, where a couple sat on a bench on the front porch, relaxing and drinking beers.
"There's smoke!" Nat pointed.
The man got up and, sort of turning, said, "oh! Thank you!" and hustled inside.
Meanwhile, the woman sat there, flip-flop dangling from her foot, swirling her beer and downing the last sip.
i was sort of goggle-eyed and confused, and when the man reappeared Nat nervously offered up, "we didn't know if we should call the fire department, or...?"
"No, no- we just burned some toast!" he assured us.
Wow. That was just toast? i think the setting sun was making the smoke look more ferocious than it really was, maybe, and apparently the toaster was directly underneath an open skylight, so the smoke was sort of being funneled right out and up. Well, phew!
The guys goes, "thanks, guys! What would we do without you?"
Well, eat severely carbonized foodstuffs, i imagine..
Item #2) Later that evening, on our trip back home after watching a lovely sunset (featuring a persimmon-hued solar body, a shining gunmetal-grey ocean, low-hanging bruised clouds, and a higher strata of gauzy, periwinkle feathery ones), we saw a police car in the alley right near the same Burned-Toast Abode! Nat wondered why the whole scene looked familiar.
Turning the corner, we saw that a whole block of Turquoise St. had been taped off by police, with many cruisers in attendance, not to mention the SWAT van and patiently waiting ambulance. Small clusters of onlooker stood nearby, hypothesizing with what scant information they had. One nice lady approached us and said, "Did they get him out yet?" to which i responded "i don't know- what's going on?!"
The story was that a man had severely beaten his girlfriend with a hammer the night before (she managed to escape and was taken to a hospital; is expected to recover, with a mere 100 stitches!), and was holed up in his house refusing to come out. Reports since have differed on this, one says that when he came out trying to surrender, the police shot him with rubber bullets. So you never know. But basically, they had shot so much tear gas into the place, that they were amazed he was still going strong. Finally, an attack dog was sent in and he surrendered. I have a question. Why didn't they just send the attack dog in before wasting all of the (presumably expensive and definitely horrible) tear gas? Hm.
Item #3) The Scripps National Spelling Bee was great fun to watch on Friday night. I was really excited about it before i turned it on, because i've always been an avid word-lover and i find etymology endlessly fascinating. Plus, have any of you ever seen the movie (documentary) Spellbound? That is some good cinema, right there. We saw it in the theater, and i swear people in the audience were holding their breaths at times. You begins to become quite charmed by the kids involved, and it is almost hard to root for any one particular child- you want them all to win. And in my mind, of course, they do. Making that far is incredible. On Friday night, the first kid i saw that was eliminated was actually twirling a piece of his hair the entire time. Even when he walked off the stage, hunched over in defeat. Too cute! One of the best moments came during a high-tension-filled run in the 11th round, with (i think) 6 contestants remaining. They had all just had a superb run, and no one had been eliminated. This was rare. People are sort of waiting for the next to fall. The judge gives Sameer Mishra his next word: "numnah".
You should probably just watch it for yourself, as i couldn't describe it well.
What a cutie. Sameer ended up winning the whole shebang, and good for him.
(When i first met Nat he had a tiny news caption, presumably from underneath a photograph in the paper, taped to his fridge:
I knew then, without a doubt, that he was the one for me.
(By the by, the cash award for the winner of the Bee these days? Thirty-five thousand. Yep.)
"There's smoke!" Nat pointed.
The man got up and, sort of turning, said, "oh! Thank you!" and hustled inside.
Meanwhile, the woman sat there, flip-flop dangling from her foot, swirling her beer and downing the last sip.
i was sort of goggle-eyed and confused, and when the man reappeared Nat nervously offered up, "we didn't know if we should call the fire department, or...?"
"No, no- we just burned some toast!" he assured us.
Wow. That was just toast? i think the setting sun was making the smoke look more ferocious than it really was, maybe, and apparently the toaster was directly underneath an open skylight, so the smoke was sort of being funneled right out and up. Well, phew!
The guys goes, "thanks, guys! What would we do without you?"
Well, eat severely carbonized foodstuffs, i imagine..
Item #2) Later that evening, on our trip back home after watching a lovely sunset (featuring a persimmon-hued solar body, a shining gunmetal-grey ocean, low-hanging bruised clouds, and a higher strata of gauzy, periwinkle feathery ones), we saw a police car in the alley right near the same Burned-Toast Abode! Nat wondered why the whole scene looked familiar.
Turning the corner, we saw that a whole block of Turquoise St. had been taped off by police, with many cruisers in attendance, not to mention the SWAT van and patiently waiting ambulance. Small clusters of onlooker stood nearby, hypothesizing with what scant information they had. One nice lady approached us and said, "Did they get him out yet?" to which i responded "i don't know- what's going on?!"
The story was that a man had severely beaten his girlfriend with a hammer the night before (she managed to escape and was taken to a hospital; is expected to recover, with a mere 100 stitches!), and was holed up in his house refusing to come out. Reports since have differed on this, one says that when he came out trying to surrender, the police shot him with rubber bullets. So you never know. But basically, they had shot so much tear gas into the place, that they were amazed he was still going strong. Finally, an attack dog was sent in and he surrendered. I have a question. Why didn't they just send the attack dog in before wasting all of the (presumably expensive and definitely horrible) tear gas? Hm.
Item #3) The Scripps National Spelling Bee was great fun to watch on Friday night. I was really excited about it before i turned it on, because i've always been an avid word-lover and i find etymology endlessly fascinating. Plus, have any of you ever seen the movie (documentary) Spellbound? That is some good cinema, right there. We saw it in the theater, and i swear people in the audience were holding their breaths at times. You begins to become quite charmed by the kids involved, and it is almost hard to root for any one particular child- you want them all to win. And in my mind, of course, they do. Making that far is incredible. On Friday night, the first kid i saw that was eliminated was actually twirling a piece of his hair the entire time. Even when he walked off the stage, hunched over in defeat. Too cute! One of the best moments came during a high-tension-filled run in the 11th round, with (i think) 6 contestants remaining. They had all just had a superb run, and no one had been eliminated. This was rare. People are sort of waiting for the next to fall. The judge gives Sameer Mishra his next word: "numnah".
You should probably just watch it for yourself, as i couldn't describe it well.
What a cutie. Sameer ended up winning the whole shebang, and good for him.
(When i first met Nat he had a tiny news caption, presumably from underneath a photograph in the paper, taped to his fridge:
'Vivisepulture' Wins Spelling Bee
Wendy Guey, 12, of West Pal Beach, Fla., was hugged by her sister Lynne and her mother, Susan, after winning the 69th annual National Spelling Bee yesterday in Washington, D.C. The seventh-grader won the $5,000 prize by spelling 'vivisepulture' (to be buried alive).I knew then, without a doubt, that he was the one for me.
(By the by, the cash award for the winner of the Bee these days? Thirty-five thousand. Yep.)
Friday, May 30
Miracle Fruit?
Saw this interesting item last night. Seriously?
..because if so, then i want in. Guzzling vinegar, biting into lemons with aplomb, and eating toast points with huge dollops of mustard sounds like just the thing!
It's like i was telling Nat: i'm pretty sure that those foods taste sour for a reason. Can't say with a certainty just what the reason is, but i'm pretty sure our tongues generally know what they're doing. However........................... i want one. You happy now? i said it. i want to freakin' flavor-trip.
Hey, did you ever do that taste bud experimenting dealio in school (say, around 6th grade) where you put different foods (er, the same foods?) on different parts of your tongue? How much fun was that?! It's okay, i won't tell anyone.
On a lighter note: this is killer. To be honest, "The Handless Organist" caused me to fall into pieces, and i had to take a break. Then when i got to "Free Indeed!" i was cracking up all over again, and by "Chicken Coupe De Ville" i was just riveted.
Enjoy, folks.
..because if so, then i want in. Guzzling vinegar, biting into lemons with aplomb, and eating toast points with huge dollops of mustard sounds like just the thing!
It's like i was telling Nat: i'm pretty sure that those foods taste sour for a reason. Can't say with a certainty just what the reason is, but i'm pretty sure our tongues generally know what they're doing. However........................... i want one. You happy now? i said it. i want to freakin' flavor-trip.
Hey, did you ever do that taste bud experimenting dealio in school (say, around 6th grade) where you put different foods (er, the same foods?) on different parts of your tongue? How much fun was that?! It's okay, i won't tell anyone.
On a lighter note: this is killer. To be honest, "The Handless Organist" caused me to fall into pieces, and i had to take a break. Then when i got to "Free Indeed!" i was cracking up all over again, and by "Chicken Coupe De Ville" i was just riveted.
Enjoy, folks.
Music matches.
Last night, while watching Lost (yes, goddammit, i can't fucking tear my eyes away even though it's not even a good show anymore), i was struck by an extreme nostalgia when Jack pulled up to the funeral parlor blasting The Pixies' "Gouge Away" from his Jeep. What a memory!
Standing at the bus stop on Shattuck and Alcatraz, 8:15 in the morning, waiting for the 43, in the rain, underneath my (long-gone) favorite umbrella, the one with the old-fashioned opera posters on it. Long black skirt, black slip flowing out underneath (shut up- i had great fashion sense!), and crumbling black boots that i couldn't throw away. Walkman blasting the Doolittle album, smoking a cigarette and thinking about the first cup of coffee i would drink at work. Climbing aboard the sleepy, steamy bus; avoiding the stares of startled citizens; eyes glued to the floor, snaking my way to the back and trying not to drip water all over everybody's feet. Settling in for the 35-minute ride, smiling and watching the splashing, glistening world go by outside as i popped in Liz Phair's Exile In Guyville.
For this reason, those 2 albums are forever melded together in my mind. Where there is one, there is always the other.
And before all that, before i moved in with Nat, i lived with my best friend Jan near Ashby and Sacramento. I couldn't stand taking the 88 down San Pablo, so i woke up earlier and just walked all the way to work. Took me about 45 minutes, sometimes more if i was dawdling. I would always play the same 3 albums: PJ Harvey's Dry, Bjork's Homogenic, and the Cranes' Loved. Other albums made their way in from time to time: Tones on Tail's Everything, Bauhaus' Mask. But it it those first three i remember the best. They were raw, emotional, beautiful, at a time when i was the loneliest i had ever been. I needed them.
And before even all of that, when i was still a teenager living in Albany, i would walk around at night by myself listening to Depeche Mode's Violator, and Peepshow by Siouxsie Sioux. I would visit my friend Abbey at work and just lose myself in the confusion of the music.
When i first moved here to San Diego, i heard Kings of Leon (Youth and Young Manhood) in a cafe and loved it. That was the same time that "Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley was playing on radios everywhere, so those two sounds are forever associated.
Wow, i can't figure out a way to end this extremely dull post so i'll just say this: remember Drew Barrymore's weird school teacher character in Donnie Darko? Do you remember how she wrote "Cellar Door" on the chalkboard, and said, "This famous linguist once said that of all the phrases in the English language, of all the endless combinations of words in all of history, that 'Cellar Door' is the most beautiful?" Well, i always thought that was hogwash. I mean, "Cellar Door"? Oh really, J. R. R. Tolkien, oh really? (said in the manner of Tina Fey.)
Certainly there are more beautiful words than those. What about "shimmering" or "roses" or "celestial" or "svelte", diaphanous, cacophony, susurration, and melt? Lavender, honeycomb, beehives. Galaxy, stardust, sagebrush, violins. softly whispering, or supple or ravishing... radishes and rhubarb, verdigris, filigree, luminous viscosity, a silvery canopy of leaves, her unwavering gaze. The list is endless i suppose. I guess everyone has his or her own favorite words and/or phrases. Perhaps i shouldn't be such a hater?
The end.
Standing at the bus stop on Shattuck and Alcatraz, 8:15 in the morning, waiting for the 43, in the rain, underneath my (long-gone) favorite umbrella, the one with the old-fashioned opera posters on it. Long black skirt, black slip flowing out underneath (shut up- i had great fashion sense!), and crumbling black boots that i couldn't throw away. Walkman blasting the Doolittle album, smoking a cigarette and thinking about the first cup of coffee i would drink at work. Climbing aboard the sleepy, steamy bus; avoiding the stares of startled citizens; eyes glued to the floor, snaking my way to the back and trying not to drip water all over everybody's feet. Settling in for the 35-minute ride, smiling and watching the splashing, glistening world go by outside as i popped in Liz Phair's Exile In Guyville.
For this reason, those 2 albums are forever melded together in my mind. Where there is one, there is always the other.
And before all that, before i moved in with Nat, i lived with my best friend Jan near Ashby and Sacramento. I couldn't stand taking the 88 down San Pablo, so i woke up earlier and just walked all the way to work. Took me about 45 minutes, sometimes more if i was dawdling. I would always play the same 3 albums: PJ Harvey's Dry, Bjork's Homogenic, and the Cranes' Loved. Other albums made their way in from time to time: Tones on Tail's Everything, Bauhaus' Mask. But it it those first three i remember the best. They were raw, emotional, beautiful, at a time when i was the loneliest i had ever been. I needed them.
And before even all of that, when i was still a teenager living in Albany, i would walk around at night by myself listening to Depeche Mode's Violator, and Peepshow by Siouxsie Sioux. I would visit my friend Abbey at work and just lose myself in the confusion of the music.
When i first moved here to San Diego, i heard Kings of Leon (Youth and Young Manhood) in a cafe and loved it. That was the same time that "Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley was playing on radios everywhere, so those two sounds are forever associated.
Wow, i can't figure out a way to end this extremely dull post so i'll just say this: remember Drew Barrymore's weird school teacher character in Donnie Darko? Do you remember how she wrote "Cellar Door" on the chalkboard, and said, "This famous linguist once said that of all the phrases in the English language, of all the endless combinations of words in all of history, that 'Cellar Door' is the most beautiful?" Well, i always thought that was hogwash. I mean, "Cellar Door"? Oh really, J. R. R. Tolkien, oh really? (said in the manner of Tina Fey.)
Certainly there are more beautiful words than those. What about "shimmering" or "roses" or "celestial" or "svelte", diaphanous, cacophony, susurration, and melt? Lavender, honeycomb, beehives. Galaxy, stardust, sagebrush, violins. softly whispering, or supple or ravishing... radishes and rhubarb, verdigris, filigree, luminous viscosity, a silvery canopy of leaves, her unwavering gaze. The list is endless i suppose. I guess everyone has his or her own favorite words and/or phrases. Perhaps i shouldn't be such a hater?
The end.
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